What Everybody Says.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2563, 24 March 1877, Page 2

What Everybody Says.

" In multitude of counsellors there is safety."

—Old Proverb

Popular novelists of the local type are sometimes rather indefinite in their explanation of quantities! If they do not perpetrate the grammatical error of false quantities, they puzzle their readers as to the meaning of words. A writer of " a semi-nautical story," describing'the treasure found/in a pirate's haunt, says :— "Most of the coin? were Spanish, some were English, and a considerable quantity were French* ; There; was also some American money, but not much." From which it is difficult to arrive at a conclusion as to what constitutes " most," and what " a considerable quantity," leaving out of the question "some English ''and " some American;" ■ The passage is slightly mixed- if not. contradictory, and to a critical reader suggests" the idea of fogginess on the part of the writer. Everybody thinks that a very, pretty algebraical, problem might be submitted to discover what the relative 'proportions of "mest," "considerable quantity "and " some " in two places really are.

Another arithmetical problem difficult of. solution has been come across. A paragraph in an American paper states that a certain lady has been confined of her twenty-third chid in nine years, having given birth to' triplets eacn time. It is something new to find that a divisor has been found for the number 23 which will give 3 as the quotient, but then everybody knows that they do strange things in Yankeeland, and can probably solve this as easily as putting 21 horses into 10 stalls and leaving 2in each. It is doubtless easy enough when you know how to do it, but threes into twenty three wont go to make " triplets each time/

For taking advantage of every opportunity—making hay while the sun shines, or any other name you liketo give to smart business-^commend everybody to the real life _ assurance agent; ,' An instance occurred yesterday. During the rush of visitors tp the Moanatairi mine an agent made bis way into the bowels of the earth and handed round his company's prospectus to miners and visitors without preference. He improved the shining hour by doing a stroke where some people would feel that, perhaps, there was but a step between them and death. The idea is a good one. If any" agent-of a life office could but enter a mine just after a fatal accident he be bound to do a good business.