GLEANINGS FROM 'PUNCH.'

Colonist, Issue 6, 10 November 1857, Page 4

GLEANINGS FROM 'PUNCH.'

Human Enlightenment.—The great lights of one age are the links of the next. Advice to Officials who Will Talk. —Persons in office cannot watch too carefully over their words. Better for a minister to do twenty foolish things than say one foolish one! The Wish of a Veteran. —'Dash it, sir!' cried a poor old major, on hearing the amount of the retiring allowances of the Bishops of London and Durham, ' I wish I were an officer on half-pay in the Church Militant!' Conjuring.—(A lady with an immense expanse of dress is about entering a brougham.)— lmpudent boy: ' I say, Bill! come and see the conjuring! Here's this here gal agoin to squeeze herself into that there broom! 1 An Error in Two Places.—Look round our Government offices, and you will find that the system of distribution is as follows:—Two much ability is demanded for the small places, and for the large places generally too little. The schoolmaster who flogs the boy, feels it a great deal more than the boy he is flogging; at least the schoolmaster always says so. When a lazy man says «I'll do it at my leisure,' you may take it for granted he'll never do it at all.' Make your Choice. —' Father,* said a juvenile to his paternal guardian, who had the bad habit of alternating from piety to profanity, 'I do think you ought to stop praying or swearing —l don't care which.'

Snow in July.—An anecdote as to the cause of the popularity of Moore's Almanac has often been told thus:—lt is said that on an occasion when the editor was busily engaged in making some calculations, one cf the compositors came hastily in, and stated that there was a blank opposite a certain part of July where the weather was usually foretold, and asked what he should put in. The editor, annoyed at the interruption, said, * 0, don't bother me now^put in anything, thunder, hail, and snow, if you like!' The compositor took him at his word. It was so put down and printed; and it so happened that it did thunder, hail, and snow at the very time! Such a circumstance could not fail to raise the almanac-maker in the estimation of the public. •» It is said that a large onion, if planted near to a rose tree so as to touch its root, will greatly improve the odour of its flowers. Screw-steamers are to be employed in the whale-fishery; the aid of steam will enable the vessels to penetrate inlets and small bays frequented by the whales, where a sailing vessel could not readily follow them. The first steam whaler has just left the Tyne for Davis' Straits. The Comet.—A maid servant at Shields, got a holiday a few days ago, for the 13th of June, ' that she might be drowned by the comet beside her mother.' A thoughtful inhabitant of Cleadon got a large chest of oak made, in which he intended to shut himself up on Saturday, the predicted day, in order to be safe from the comet. A sly Liverpool tradesman writes an essay in the advertising columns of the local papers, demonstrating the danger of the ' milky way' from the comet, and advising the public to lay in a store of his butter ' before the source is dried up. 1