TIT BITS AND TWADDLE

A muff is a thing which holds a young lady's hand without squeezing it.

Clipped from an English, paper : 'For sale — A bull-terrier dog, two years old. Will eat anything; very fond of children.— Apply etc'

A Brisbane man by the name of Corn, married Miss Wheat in a Baptist Church, and the choir electrified the congregation by singing, ' Oh, What Will the Harvest Be V

' Keep . quiet, my friend, and don't make a fuss,' as the New Plymouth highwayman is reported to have said to one of his victims, ' remember that contentment is better than riches.'

Just why it is thus there is nobody knows, ,

But its truthfulness none. have denied, The Bhoe of the girl with the prettiest

hose Will the oftenest come untied

' A bob in and the ■winner shouts ?' repeated Mr Hutchison, E.M., at Masterton, the other day, during the hearing of a case, ' and pray what does this phrase mean ?' And then ' the counsel winked at the clerk,' and His Worship was enlightened. Of course he had never heard of the game in all his innocent life 1

The cheap concert craze is in full swing in Christcburch. At iwo halls sixpenny concerts are given weekly, and now threepenny concerts are announced by a third speculator. The next thing will be penny concerts with sandwiches tbjown in, during the interval. It never rains but it pours.

A Christchurch correspondent writes : — The piercing shrieks of a woman, which were heard issuing from one of the most respectable houses in Richmond the other night, caused many passers-by to stop and listen. I fancy we require a society for the prevention of cruelty to women and children as much here in Ghristehurch as you do in Auckland. [Branches of the Auckland Society will be established in due course in all the great centres of the colony.— Ed. Observer.]

The unexpected oft occurs — When some fair maid, designing To call some favoured fellow hers, Her net around him twining.

She knows that he'll succumb some day

To wiles so well directed; Yet when he doeß she'll blußh and say,

' This is so unexpected 1' Just what the recipients of illuminated addresses and purses of sovereigns always say!

A certain M.H.R. while visiting his electorate the other day, called ai a farm house and was told that the l boss ' was working in a neighbouring field. ♦Good morning,' said the politician blandly. • Mornin',' was the gruff reply, • Crop looks well ?' ' Yes, might be worbe.' ' I'm Mr , member for this district. 1 ' Yes, I know. 1 voted for yer, worse luck.' 'Beg pardon? Didn't quite catch what you said?' Then the farmer muttered something about promises and piecrust, and went on with his work.

The dear little innocent things ! Three stylishly-dressed young ladies, looking just too sweet for anything, popped in at the Napier theatre on the evening of the Premier's address, and seated themselves in the dress-circle. After listening for some time to Mr Beddon's oration pne of the young ladies addressing a gentleman standing near said : 'Is he giving a temperance address ?' 1 Not to night.' ' Why 1 thought he always did.' ' Who do you take him for ?' enquired the gentleman. ' Why Mr Isitt, of course.' He laughed, and replied sarcastically, ' Oh, that is not Mr Isitt ; that is only the Premier. 1 'Well, I declare' she said in pretty confusion, ' then we came to the wrong show/ But they sat out the address.

After Takapuna races: Mrs Symonds-Street: 'How could you tell that your husband lost money at the races to-day, when he said nothing about it? 1 His Wife : ' I know he did, because when he came home he began talking about the advantages of saving money.' Begging-letter writers and sub-scription-list impostors are not confined to Auckland. An artist in this line of business has recently been going round the Adelaide hotels and places of business with the following :— 'deare frend i am unwell and not cable to work. lam the true duake of yaurk was bourne in the country of yaurkshire. I am deare frend a free meison my name is , and deare frend will you elp me with a little moite.' From which it would appear that the true duake of yaurk's education was neglected in bis youth. Which is a pity.

A Christchurch electrician whose clothes' line had been repeatedly stripped of its linen by sneak thieves, or ' snowdroppers ' as they are termed in the expresßive >language of the profession, substituted copper wire for rope and before going to bed next night connected the new ' line ' with the battery. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2 a.m., that electrician was startled by piercing shrieks in his back-garden. He arose and* went out in his pyjamas to reconnoitre. He found a woman grasping a wet sheet in one hand and a wire with the other. She was writhing in agony and yelled : 4lf you'll let me off this time 1 11 never do it again. Let me off this time, good gentleman, oh, oh, oh !' He bad to run in to disconnect the wires, and when he came out again the woman had gone. And so had the sheet and all the other articles. IS" Bead our new pbize list.

A bank suspension always seems worse than it ia, because it offers such a a good get out for people who haven't got a bean in the bank.

She frowned on him, and called him Mr, Because in fun he'd merely Kr, And then, in spite, The following night, This naughty Mr Kr Sr.

A Sydney editor complains that since the Burton-street tragedy things have been very quiet in New South Wales metropolis, and winds- up with : 'What the people want is Gore with a capital G 1 know, to my sorrow, that with newspapers the circulation depends upon the blood.'

A man never realises how much furniture he owns until he tries to walk rapidiy through bis house in the dark.

' It is a poor rulo that won't work both ways.' Is it, though? Tell a mother that she looks so like her daughter that you cannot tell them apart ; and then try it on the daughter.

A Napier paper, speaking of the Bey. Prohibition Luti's Napier campaign, considers that ' prohibition pays a lot better than preaching Hie and brimstone to a thin congregation.' Probably.

An Adelaide man was 'wound up ' the other day and he paid twenty shillings in the pound. Now his late creditors call him a fool, and they won't trust him any more. His credit's ruined.

Such is fame ! An Oxford man relates in a local Magazine how he ordered photOß of Lord Beaconsfield and Mr Jtsse Collings from an Oxford photographer's. The young lady in charge replied : ' We Bhall have to get you Lord Beaconefield printed specially, but vse will Eend you up Jesßie Collins in the morniDg. Would you like her in " Ta-ra ra-boom-de-ay?">

A newspaper war is raging at Masterton where the editors of the rival dailies are exchanging compliments quite in the ' reptile contemporary ' style. The Star man referred to the Times ' We ' the other day as ' a hard-heaited and fiendish mortal. 1 Whereupon the Times man retorted with: 'We shall take no further notice of him or of anything which he writes or says, unless he becomes too offensive, and then we shall probably kick him.' The Star man's reply is anxiously looked for.

Sabbatarianism still flourishes in Scotland to what must appear to colonists, at least, an incredible extent. Eecently there was a sacred Sunday concert at Inverness, and it was well patronised, and on the same evening an Indian troupe, under engagement to one of the local theatres, arrived and sundry wicked persons assembled at the railway station „ to see them. This heinous behavionr excited th 6 wrathful notice of the local Free Church Presbytery. ' Such conduct in a Christian town is a defiance to God himself,' declared a Eev. Mr Mackenzie, ' and shows that Inverness is fast ripening for the judgments of the Most High.' 'Yes,' chimed in a Key. Dr. Macdonald. ' we are drifting even in the North of Scotland very fast into a sort of Continental Sabbathism.' ' Already,' added this learned divine, ' there 'is a tremendous amount of malhing during the summer evenings.' Then th 9 rev. gentlemen groaned in chorus and the meeting adjourned.