Facetæ.

Clutha Leader, Volume V, Issue 236, 17 January 1879, Page 7

Facetæ.

"A little nonsense now and then, Is relished by the wisest men." A London bootmaker has this extraordinary announcement in his window, " Ladies will be sold as low as seven shillings a pair." A German is inventing a flyingmachine, and wants to fight a duel with the printer who knocked the " f " off " flying." One of the written questions at a recent school examination was, " What is a relative pronoun?" One of the answers was, "It is a pronoun that tells you about your relatives." Conversation overheard not a thousand miles from Adelphi Terrace : " I say, Bede, can you lend me a Shaksperef' "I don't think I've got a Shakspere, but I can lead you a brad, awl." Master Jacky, (inquiringly) • « Why doesn't baby eat buns, aunty ?" Aunt Singleton : " Because she has no teeth, dear.' Master Jacky (audibly): "Then why can't you lend her yours, aunty 1 You ain't always using 'em." A gentleman who left his operaglasses in a* box at a West-end theatre, and had been unable to recover them, concluded an indignant letter to the manager as follows—" Apart from the moral value of those glasses, they cost me five po mds." When the foreman of a Cleveland paper " calliopes " down the tin telephone for "more copy," the editor calmly blows the foam back from the edge of a half-gallon measure, and replies in unruffled tones, " Hammer another Black Sea on the war-map, and it to 'em again." Louis XVLIL told one of his courtiers one day that be was in the habit of asking his ministers whether they had a majority. When answered iv the affirmative, he would say, " Very well * then you don't want me, and I can go-." If the reply was in the negative, he would observe, " Very well ; then I don't want you, and you can go !" Theodore Hook was once with the Duke of B . The latter was to have heen one of the knights at the Eglington Tournament, and was lamenting that he was obliged to excuse himself on the ground pf an attack of the gout. " How," said he, "could I ever get my poor puffed legs into these abominable iron boots ?" "Tt will he quite as appropriate," replied Hook, "if your Grace goes in your list shoes." About the time barometers became so cheap as to induce agriculturists to purchase them, a farmer in Kilbride having been persuaded to become the happy possessor of the ornamental as well as usefnl instrument so liable to mislead the ignorant, on one occasion, in spite of a rising barometer, it continued raining ; the farmer, losing all patiencp, carried the instrument to the door, held it up towards the sky, and exclaimed, " In the name o' gu'idnees, win ye no believe your am een V The following impromptu is attributed to a well-known Commons' House teetotal advocate; it seems tb have been suggested by the motion for tbe appointment of a committee of tho House of Lords on intemperance, the Duke of Westminster having deputed the function of "moving" to Lord Cork : — Said the Duke to the Earl, " A committee T want, This horrible drinking to throttle • And you, my dear Cork, are the very best man I can think of for stopping the bottle." So the Earl did the business without idle talk, And moved the committee instantor ; And they all of them said they wore thankful to Cork, Who thus helped them to stop the decanter. One must be easy in one's mind to go to sleep quietly, but what must have* been the feelings of the stranger who was sent up-stairs in a Western hotel to sleep with a backwoodsman, who gave him this Welcome •—" Wa'al, stranger, I've no objection to your sleeping with me, none in the least j but it seems to me the bed's rather narrow for you to sleep comfortable, j considerin' how 1 dream. You see I ■ am an old trapper, and generally dream of shootin' ahd scalpin' Injuns. Where I I stopped night afore last they charged me five dollars extra 'cause I happened | to whittle up the head-board with my j knife while I was dreamin'. But you I can come . to bed if you like. I feel | kinder peaceable to-night."