MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1166, 10 April 1874, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.

A laughable story conies from one of the Courts of Common (says a London letter.) Two costermongers claimed individually the ownership of a donkey, and as the case was one calling for friendly arbitration rather than judicial interference, the presiding judge recommended the suitors to go out into the vardaud settle the matter between them. His Lordship's kindly meaning seems to have been misunderstood, for in the course of an half-an-hour or so the " costers" returned into Court, one of them with his eyes blackened and his face cut and bleeding, and the other in a state of excitement betokening the authorship of his friend's injuries. The Judge learnt, when it was too late, that his advice had been accepted in its Whitechapel sense, and that the two men had belabored each other until one of them resigned the donkey to save his own person. A gentleman going down the river on a steamer, the engine of which was upon the deck, he sauntered to see the working of the machinery. Near him stood a man apparently bent upon the same object. In a few moments a squeaking noise was heard on the opposite side of the engine. Seizing the oil-can—a gigantic one, by the way —the engineer sought out the dry spot, and, to prevent further noise of that kind, liberally applied the contents of the canto every joint. All went on well for a while, when the squeaking was heard in another direction. The oiling process was repeated and quietly restored: but as the engineer was coming towards the spot occupied by the gentleman and the stranger, he detected the true cause of the difficulty. The stranger was a ventriloquist. Walking straight up behind him he seized the astonished joker by the nape of the neck, and emptied the contents of the can down his back. " There !" said he, " I don't believe that old engine will squeak again." A very superior quality of cham pagne is now made with petroleum as the chief ingredient.. The manufacturers claim that it is the best that has ever benzine.

The autumnal season lias produced the usual amount of newspaper notices, both in prose and verse ; but we have seen nothing to compare with the sad refrain of a journal printed in Pennsylvania, and appropriately called the Valley Spirit, which thus gives vent to its feelings :—" The melancholy days have come, —the saddest of the year ; it's a little too warm for whiskey hot, and a little too cold for beer."

The reporter of a Nashville paper, who, mentioning a young lady's decease touchingly alluded to her as " one of the brightest jewels that ever glittered in the diadem of an earthly home ; one of the purest stars that ever gleamed upon the frontlet of our social sky ; one of the sweetest flowers that ever bloomed in the garden of earliest association," has had his salary increased to four dollars a month, half cash and the balance in cord-wood.

At a late wedding,in Somerset, the bridegroom's present to the bride was a thousand sovereigns on a golden salver. An Illinois exchange relates how the tears of mortification coursed down the cheeks a newly-married lady in that State, when she beheld the presents given her by her father, consisting of a wash-tub, axe, three sadirons, a collection of baking dishes aud saucepans. It was not their value she despised, but the meaning they conveyed. Suspended animation —A rat held up by the tail,

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