ODDS AND ENDS.

Temuka Leader, Volume I, Issue 89, 23 October 1878, Page 3

ODDS AND ENDS.

Two local preachers were discussing the merits of a third. “He beats me at a sermon,” said one, “ but I’ll pray him for a note anyday.” An old Scotchman was in the habit of saying a daily prayer out of doors beneath a shaky old wall. He used to say in his prayer that if he was dealt with according to his deserts the wall would fall upon him. One day a wag gave the wall a push from the other side just as Sandy reached the old formula, and it very nearly smothered the penitent. “ Hoot Lord ! ” he exclaimed, “ canna a body say a sma’ thing in jest but ye maun tak’ it in airnest ?” Cheapness and economy are not necessarily the same thing. A Russian Magistrate civilises quarrelsome fishwives by locking them up in the same cell until they are willing to kiss each other in public and promise to live peaceably, “ Coach ” is derived from Kotze, in Hungary, the place in which such carriages were originally built. An original young Miss, of Frankfort, Ivy., promenades in a tissue paper dress and hat of her own construction. The steam engine, allied with the telegraph, has done more to bring the families of man together than all the popular preachers that ever appeared on the public platform. The steam engine is no Sectarian, his creed is progress, on, on, until the earth is girdled by an iron hand, for assuredly we are living in an iron age, and an age of “ polished brass.” The magistrates in one of the midland counties once unanimously passed these three resolutions :—l. That it is desirable to build a new gaol. 2. That the new gaol shall be built, as far as possible, out of the old gaol. 3. That the old gaol shall stand and be used until the new one is built. “ Why does the operation of hanging kill a man ? ” inquired a witty bishop. “ Because,” replied a physiologist, “inspiration is checked, circulation is stopped, and blood suffuses and congests the brain.” “ Bosh ! ” exclaimed the bishop ; “it is because the rope is not long enough to let his feet touch the ground.

In Tundja, “ the Cashmere of Europe ” roses an- not grown as in England, in isolated pitches in gardens, but in fields and in ridges,-as if they were no better than potatoes. A traveller states that the horses, oxen, sheep, and goats ut South Africa eat locusts greedily ; elephants and other large wdd ruminants seem to look upon them as dainties ; and all the native races of the south-east of Africa consider them delicacies. They are collected in heaps and dried and fried. The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world. But I fancy it is so with most work when a man goes into it with a will. Brewett, the blacksmith said to me the other day that his ’prentice had no mind to his trade ; “and,yet, sir,” said Brewett, “ what would a young fellow have if he doesn’t like the blacksmithing !” How often we find men fit for engineers at the plough, ploughmen engineers, parsons in soldier’s uniform) and vice versa,: —children put to music without a fair development of tune, men • qualified mentally for the higher branches of architecture working in coal mines, and others at this profession more,,fit for, the spade and shovel, doctors as farmers, and others practising medicine without a taste for the humane science.'"