ODDS AND ENDS.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4369, 4 February 1909, Page 3

ODDS AND ENDS.

Tomatoes are to be had at three shillings per case (about lolbs) at the Thames, so a lady visitor brings word.

How dethe the nimble sand-fly lake, His merry, merry meal, Resrardless of the moan we make The agonies we feel.

How grateful we should be for the things in life that are not of our choosing ! What a failure we should make of life if we could order everything ourselves ! A keen observer writes: “If the ideal conditions of life of which most of us dream could be realised, the result would be a padded and luxurious existence, well-housed, well-fed, welldressed, with, with all the winds of heaven tempered to indolence and cowardice.” Even those who have learned to rejoice in hard work could not safely be trusted to have oil their work and its results just as they like. The one thing that we are sure might so profitably be left out is likely to be the very thorn in the flesh that keeps us up to decency and manhood All that God asks us to be responsible for is, not our conditions of living, but what we do with them.

Te Aroba housewife to milk vendor “ I cant understand what’s the matter with the milk, it’s that poor it would scarcely stand a two and a-half test, and it turns sour the minute I put it on to scald. ” M'lk Vendor, perplexedly “ Well you see were only like Jonah’s whale taking a profit out of the water.” T. A.H. : “ I don’t object to your ‘engaging in benevolent pi O] eels outside of business hours ; and you may rescue as many prophets as you please so lang as you don’t dip them out in the milk can, nor scowl the milk sour in the process. It’s milk I pay for and I guess if you supply a good article the profits will look after themselves.

Lady : “ What is it, little boy ?” Little Jim (carrying a cat): “I came to claim the reward you offered for the return of your canary. ” Lady : “ But that is a cat. ” Jim : “ Yes ; but the canary’s insid°. ”

Tourist at Te Aroha in quest of postoffice : “ Can you tell me where the postoffice is? ” Resident bystander:** Certainly, there it is, ” pointing it out. T. T A. looking round in vain “ W-h-e----r-e ? ” R. bystander, pointing this time with his walking stick, “ there. sir ” T. T. A. “ Adjusting his eyeglass “ Ah, thank you so much, quite au an tiquity to be sure, no doubt you are proud of it,” but, after a pause, * ‘ I shouldn’t have seen it if you [hadn’t shown me where it was. ”

Overheard on the river bank : “ Tom, if I were to die would you die too ?” “ What rot, dear,” burst forth Tom. “ Oh, I'didn’t mean that Tom, I was thinking r? a song.”

“ Life is not an idle ore, But iron-flag from central gloom And hep ed hot with burning fears, And bat aed in baths of hissing tears, And battered with the shocks of doom To shape and use.” Tennyson’s “In Memoriam.”

“ Oh sweet is love’s first hope to gentle mind. As eve’s first star through fleecy cloudlet peeping; And sweeter than the gentle south -west wind, O’er willowy meads and shadowed waters creeping, And Cere’s golden fields. The sultryhind Meets it with brow uplift, and stays his reaping. ” Coleridge. “ A dog starved at his master’s gate Predicts the ruin of the statp. ” Blake.