ODDS AND ENDS.

Temuka Leader, Volume I, Issue 86, 12 October 1878, Page 3

ODDS AND ENDS.

Hairpins.—All hairpins look alike to men ; but let a wife go off on a visit for a month, and come home and find a hairpin near the door, and she can’t wait a minute to grow red in the face. Looking after the wind.—ln Cincinnati almost every portion of the hog is put to use. A distinguished philosopher of that city is now trying some method of turning the squeal to account, A Florida negro mistook a mule for a ghost, and ]?oked it with a stick. The verdict recited that he came to his death by using too short a stick in probing the unknowable for evidence of a future existence. A little girl was reproved for playing outdoors with boys, and informed that, being seven years old, she was “ too big for that now,” But, with ail imaginable innocence, she replied, “Why, the bigger we. grow the better we like ’em.!” A London medical journal is responsible for this atrocious witticism; “A lady who practices medicine commits two faults —she increases the number of doctors and decreases the number of women.” The Silent Watches of the night.— Nervous old gentleman to watchmaker—“No, none of them will do. I want a watch that won’t go tick! tack! tick! tack! all the night long. I hate to hear a watch tick; it keeps me awake.” Watchmaker —“ Ah ! I see, sir. Your want one of the silent watches of the night. I don’t keep ’em.” Intention is everything. He meant to be consoling, and yet his words musthave been unpleasantly suggestive. The master called his coloured servant to his sile and said, “ Sam, I’m dying; I’m going on a long journey.” Sam’s eyes wore moist, but lie encouraged the sick man by replying, “ Nebbcr mind, it’s all de way doAvn hill,” It may interest our stage reformers to know that in America deficient costume is thus imaginatively expressed —“ Not clothes enough on to wad a gun.” A modern philosopher, having in mind the motion of the earth on its axis at seventeen miles a second, says that, if you lift your hat in the street to bow to a friend, you go seventeen miles bareheaded without taking cold.

A negro teamster in Nashville declates that he must citi. r give up driving mules nr withdraw frOrn the church, the two pos’tions being inconmatible. Sn(' , ;S’I)All Y EbUi .VTJOX IN IlilvLANl). —Lord C:i rns introduced on Saturday quite the bi st mem ure which the present Government have originated —a measure for encouraging secondary education in Ireland, by devoting the proceeds of £1,000,000 of the surplus of the Irish Church to assisting the most deserving of those who are under education, and the most efficient of the secondary schools which give it. The Government do not propose to found anything, or to take any responsibility for any of the schools which their plan may result in assisting ; but they undertake to examine the secondary schools every year—to distribute scholarships, tenable during the term of education, to the best of those thus examined ; and to assist the school managers, by paying them a certain sum per head for every boy who passes the anual examination in not less than two subjects, and more for those who pass in more than two subjects. Any school shall be a secondary school within the meaning of these provisions which, not being a national (or primary) school, affords classical or scientific education to pupils- under eighteen years of age, of whom not less than ten shall have made 100 attendances at least in the j eriod between the 15th October and the last day of the month proceeding the examination (which is to be held in either June or July). The subjects of examination are to be Latin and Greek,with Roman and Greek history ; English and English literature and history ; French, German, and Italian languages and literature ; mathematical and natural science. Hence there will be no difficulty to any good secondary school, with as many as twenty pupils, in profiting by the Government scheme. We trust the Bill will pass this Session, which must depend on the Home-rulers not finding an excuse for regarding the proposal of the Government as “ unpatriotic.” But Home-rulers are great in cavils. —‘Press.’