Amusing Blunders.

Auckland Star, Volume XVI, Issue 3807, 21 October 1882, Page 2 (Supplement)

Amusing Blunders.

SobN after the arrival of tha welcome news from Waterloo, a Cornish squire,- meeting some miuew, thought to gratify their cms by the announcement that peace was come at last, bat was dumbfoundered by one of them replying " I never beered as theer'd been war yet. Such indifference regarding what is going on in the world is nothing uncommon, Codrington, a few days after his return home as victor of Navarmo, was greeted by a country acquaintance with, V How are you, Cudrington 1 I haven't seen you for some time. Had any shooting lately ?" " Yes, I have had some remarkable'shootlng," said the adnrral as he passed on his way. At the ansious time when war or peace depended upon America's answer to England's demand tor the release of Messrs Mason and blidell, a gentleman going into the smokingroom of a We sh hotel was astonished to lUd the company there not only unaware of the existence of the envoys of the South", bttt actually ignorant that there was any trouble at all in the States-an ignorance shared by the farmer who declined to subscribe to the Lancashire Relief Fund on the plea that' Lancashire folk bad no bu-iness ta go to war wi'h the Yankrc. M. Thiera oue day entered a cottage nc»r Cauerets, occupied by an old n»au named Firiiaa, mid inquired it he was not «it the scho>l of the Truis F'ikos wilh Th'ers. " Thiera ! Thicrs I' echoed the cake-seller; "yes, I rememicr him; a very mischievous boy." " W311," sail the great little man, "I am he." 'I he statesman's old schoolmate, not at all disturbed, asked what h« was dong, "Well," Slid the President, ' I'm doing nothing just now, bu' for a long time I was MiuUtc." Wbat sort of minister the village aostor supposed he had been was shown by his replying, "Ah, you were a Protestant, weren't you?'

It wonld be interesting to know how many of th: electors of the United Kingdom have any idea of what they mean when they dub themselves Liberal or Conservative. A vast number, we fancy, are no batter thin Stephen Noyos, the strouo voter, who deposed that he only knew of two pirties, the yellows and the blue; and, beiDg a man wno could not understaod, was unable to say whether Mr Disraeli was a ycllowor a blue—indeed, he had newr heard that gentleman's name before. That of Mr G!adstone was more familiar to him ; he was a Liberal, he supposed. Pressed to give his notion of what Liberals were, he replied, "I think they be the beat side of the party," under which impre^s;on he bad doubtl as cast hi* vote. Such political innocence is far more common tban some peopc imagine. We once interviewed an old voter in the Midlands who protested he was neither liberal nor Tory, blue nnr yellow; he Was a cocked hat like his father and grandfather before him ; but what a cocked hat might be, as to principles, was more than he or anyone else could cell us. Ue hid seen a good many tou«h contests in his time, and with all his ignorancs of political parties was not so verdant bb the three young fellows who once stood gazing at a placard at Wymondham, informing passers by that the Northwich eltction had resulted thus :— Tillett ... ... ... '.„ ... 5.877 Wilkinson 5,079 Majority ... 798 Said one, "That's about that election! there Wis only two on'cm got in tho'.' "Wo," quoth the second, " that's all, the two -op ones ;" while the third as he walked away, obsi rved, " Old Majority didn't get many, did he?' A traveller on the Ohio overhear.) an odd dispute between two boatmen, fc'aid the first: "I hat was an awful winter, I tell you. The river was froze tight at Cincinnati, and the thermometer went down to twenty degrees below Cairo." "Below which?" queried his puzzled mate. " Below Cairo, you lubberhead I You see, when it freezes at Cairo, it must be pretty cold; so they say bo many degrees below Cairo." The unconvinced one replied : " No, they doit, you've got the wrong word, it's so many decrees below Vero. I don't know what it means, but that'B what they say when it's dreadful cold."

The Honolulu Settlement for Lepers..

The following painful account of the settlement set apart for leper* in the sardwich Islands, is from tho pen of a recent visitor:

"1 went with Dr Fitch' to the branch settlement for lepers. It is an enclosure of several acres on what is called Fisherman's Point, on Honolulu Bay. Scattered over the crninds are scotes of cottages, Borne connected, others detached, and the offices and buildings used by Doctor Fitch's assistants. Imagine, if you can, a settlement of Anglo-Saxons, or people of any other highly civilized race, all of them aflncted with, and more or le.«s deformed, oy an incmrablc and horrible diseaseknowing it to be incurable, and seeing themselves and each other dropping to pieces from its iU dread effects. I cannot

imagine such a picture, because I honestly believe that suicide would make a settlement impoasib'e among any other tban a people still barbarians, or else in

the chilhood of civilisation. Such was the scttltment I visited. There were men, women and children living in a world apart from ours, having nothing worth living for save mere existence, a succession of days, marked only by slow consummation of the death that had already seized upon their bodies, and had a'ready deprived them of portion?, which were already returned to dust.

There were in that strange and unnatural community, marriages, births, deaths I would not attempt to describe in detail the unrelieved ghastline?s of toe sights there, yet not one of the inmate; who helped to make up the absolute dreadfulness 6f the scene failed to greet us with a smile and cordial aloba, . ,

That only served to emphases the darkness of the picture. I said not one; yet there was ooe. On a bed in a little cottage room, wbWopen door faced the dark, cool cannons back of the city, and whose window' looked out upon the lovely biy aad let in the lazy murmur of wave 3 breaking over the coral reefe, lay a native womin, dying. Nearly all of her right hand had dropped off, but in the remnants of her finger? *he held a feather fan, which she faintly wavad across her distorted face, to cool the hot, '■ acbing eyes' tbat_ had not been closed for months, the palsied muscles of her eyelids refusing their duty.

As the doctor spoke plqisantly to her, she turned her glaring eyes towards Us, but did not speak. " Her mouth is affected, too," the doctor said.. We ttood aside from her door to admit a cooling breath of air that juitY^en came down from the mountains Tne swollen /ace' rested, and the feebly moving hand fell, in gratitude for' the mountain breeze, yet, when it died away, the hand did not move again ; it was' her last moment. The numotainV gentle breath had comforted her, and when n died away her brea'hing ceased too. ; In one cottage we saw a little girl whose fingers had been drawn up until her hand was half closed. Sbe had experimented with a novel cure by calmly stepping on the bent fingers until she had straightened thorn out. She exhibited the result with pride; four finders straight and stiff, and as useful as so many wooden pegs would have been. Out on what is called the play ground were some boys playing ball, one with a useless hand, another with a palsied leg, another with a foot partly gone, and others with swollen, senseless faces. On the veranda of a cottage sat two old natives, both with useless legs, but neither of whom showed any trace of leprosy in face or hands . As I watched them one began chanting a huluhulu, accompanying it with appropriate movements of his bands. Possibly, observing the look of astonishment on my face, the old man's companion, with a meaning wiak at mo joined in the chant, and soo-iboth the old lepers were chanting and waving their hands in the sensuous measures of the hulu hulu. It was a dance of death indeed ; Puuchinello's mask over a moulding skull; a rollicking revelry in a chnrnell house ; life nmcking a gaping tomb. The medical profession here in Honolulu is in terrific dispute about what leprosy is (!) and whether or not it is contagious. This, of course, is an old dispute, but it has been revived with sreat violence by the assertion of Dr. Fitch that it is, if not curable.amen-. able in a large degree to treatment, and that it is not contagious from ordinary contact, such as would demand the transportation of lupers into isolation. Dr. Fitch has been bore two years, and naturally liis youthful but dogrnaticil contradictions of She theories of. the old and experienced practitioners has raised a discussion of a rather warm nature However, his practice appoak to the sympathies of the natives, and he has a large, if rather ignorant, following. . , ,