VARIETIES.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume I, Issue 19, 11 May 1867, Page 4

VARIETIES.

The Impudent Bride. —Not long since in Liverpool, as a couple were going to he married, and had proceeded as far as the church-yard gate, the gentleman stopped his fair comrade with the following unexpected address: — ‘ 3Jary, during our courtship 1 have told you most of my mind—when we are married, I shall insist upon three things. ‘ What are they ? ’ astonished lady. ‘ln the first place,’ said he, ‘ I shall lie alone; secondly, I shall eat alone; and lastly, I shall find fault when there is no occasion; can you submit to these conditions V ‘0 yes, sir, very easily,’ she replied, ‘ for if you lie alone, I shall not; if you eat alone, I shall eat first; and as for your finding fault without occasion, that I think may be prevented, for I will take care that you shall never want occasion.’

Warning to Shilly-Shally Lovers. —A case was recently tried in Rutland, Vermont, North America, in which aMiss Munson recovered 1,425 dollars from a Mr. Hastings, for a breach of a marriage contract. The Vermont judge charged the jury that no explicit promise necessary to bind the parties to a marriage contract, but that long-continued attention or intimacy with a female was a good evidence of intended matrimony as a special contract. The principle is that if Hastings did not promise he ought to have done so. The law holds him responsible for the non-performance of his duty. A most excellent decision ; —a most righteous judge! compared with whom Daniel would appear but a common squire. We have no idea of young fellows dangling about girls for a year or two, and then going off, leaving their sweethearts half-courted. We hate this everlasting nibble and never a bite—this heating the hush and never starting the game, it is one of the crying sins of the age. There is not one girl in twenty can tell whether she is courted or not. No wonder that when Betty Simper’s cousin asked if Billy Doubtfully courted her, she replied, “ 1 don’t know exactly—he’s a sorter courtin,’ and a sorter not courtin.” We have no doubt that this Hastings is one of these “ sorter not courtin ” fellows and most hearily do we rejoice that the judge has brought him to book with a 1,425 verdict. The {Ruling Passion.—A gambler, on his death-bed, having seriously taken leave of his physician, who told him that he could not live beyond eight o’clock next morning, exerted the small strength he had left to call the doctor back f which having accomplished with difficulty, for he could hardly exceed a whisper—‘Doctor,’ said he, ‘l’ll bet you five guineas I live till nine.’

Experiment. —An Irish student at Oxford finding a horse and keep very expensive, thought he might easily by degrees bring him to live without hay or oats, and abstracted daily something from his food, until at last the horse died. A friend asked him how his horse came to die ? ‘ Why, I thought to have made him live on nothing, and just as I brought him to it he died.’

A Suspicious Woman. —One afternoon •when the wind was playing sad pranks with awnings, and crinolines, a gentleman, in feeble health, was struggling to reach his home aided by his wife. Just as they reached the comer of a street, a huge tin chimney pot was torn from the roof of a house by the power of the wind, and dashed to the ground, just in front of the feeble gentleman and his wife. “ Good heavens!” exclaimed the gentleman, “ that was a narrow escape for us.”—“lf it had hit us, it would have killed us,” she replied. The two stopped for a moment to examine the chimney-pot—more dangerous during winds than a bombshell; but just as they were scrutinising it a window near them was opened, a female head was thrust out, and in shrill tones she shouted, “You needn’t think you’re goin’ tncan-r that off, ‘cause it ‘Wongs to my house!”

An Heroic Girl.— A young woman laid a wager she would descend into a vault in the middle of the night, and bring from thence a skull. The person who took the wager had previously hid himself in the vault and as the girl seized a skull,cried, in a hollow voice, ‘Leave me my head!’—‘There it is,’ said the girl throwing it down and catching up another. ‘ Leave me my head!’ said the same voice. ‘Nay, nay, said the heroic lass, you cannot have had two heads:’ so brought the skull and won the wager.