HOTCH – POTCH

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 25 June 1927, Page 18

HOTCH - POTCH

“Daddy, who was Hamlet?” Wise Father: “Aren’t you ashamed of such ignorance at \our age Bring me a Bible, and I’ll soon show you who he was!”, Boss (engaging office hoy) : “Is there anything you can do better than anyone else?” Boy: “Yes, sir; read my own writing.” Undergraduate: Yes, father, when I have taxen my degree I intend to go in for literature and journalism—write .or money, you know. Pater: Well, my boy, it seems to me that’s, what you’ve been doing all the time you’ve been at tl.e ’Varsity. Stump orator, discoursing on the faults of wives : Can you tell me anything that will drive a man more to drink than a lazy, slovenly woman ? A voice from the audience: Did ye ever try a salt herrin’, sir? Guide : This is the famous place ot the twenty-four echoes, and last year a gentleman who heard them suddenly went mad. Tourist: How did that happen? Guide: His mother-in-law called to him, and when he heard twenty-four mothers-in-law at the same time it was too much for him. Neighbour : ‘ ‘What beautiful hens you have, Airs Stuckup.” Airs Stuckup : “Yes; they are ail imported fowls.” “You don’t tell me so. I suppose they lay eggs every day?” “They could do so if we thought proper; but our coreumstances are such that my hens are not iequired to lay eggs every day!” A schoolgirl was required to write an essay of two hundred and twenty words about a motor-car. She submitted the following: “Aly uncle bought a motor-car. He was riding in the country when it broke down going uphill. I think this is about twenty words. The other two hundred are what my uncle said when he was walking back to town, but I don’t remember what they were.”

“Oh, steward,” came a disconsolate groan from a pasenger in a deck-chair, “how far are we off land?” No answer came to this remark, which had been made several times that day. “Oh, steward, do answer me —how far?” “Alile and a half, sir,” came the gruff reply. “Thank heaven! In what direction, steward?” “Straight down!” was the answer.

A Scottish person, still on the summer side of forty, was driving home from an outlying hamlet when he overbook a joung woman. He recognised her as the maid-of-aJI-work at a farm which he would pass, so he pulled up and offered her a lift. Alary gladly accepted his offer, and they chatted pleasantly all the way to the farm gate. “Thank you, sir,” she said, as she got down. “Don’t mention it, Alary; don’t mention it,” he told her politely. “No, I won’t,” Alary obligingly assured him.

A suburbanite was observed by a neighbour to be harrying liis poultry with a motor-horn. “\V hat are you doing?” the latter asked. “Sh-sh!” came the reply. “I’m training the chickens to run out into the road whenever they hear a motor coming. I got good prices last year for all my poultry in that way!”

A barrister was cross-examining a rather inno: ent-looking countryman. “So you had a pistol?” the barrister asked. “I had sir.” “Whom did you intend to shoot with it?” “I wasn’t intending to shoot anyone.” “Then was it lor nothing that you got it?” “No, it wasn’t..” Lome, come, sir! By virtue of your solemn oath, what did you get that pistol for?” “By virtue of my solemn oath,” said the countryman. “I got it for ten and sixpence!”

She was a young and pretty- girl of a sporting turn of mind. Somehow she heard that a certain horse was to win a certain race, and , deciding to indulge in a little speculation, she went to a “cookie” and put a sovereign on for a win, asking at the same time how much she would get if it came off. “If it starts at 20 to 1 you will get 21 back,” said the bookie: “if at 10 to 1, 11 back; if at 5 to 1 you’ll get 6 back.” “I see,” said the maiden, “and if it starts at one o’clock, how much should 1 get then?”

Mr.* Diddledums, the village grocer, was a very learned man. It had been said of him that he could answer any question that was put to him. One day a lady entered his shop and asked how long the oozlum bird had been extinct. The grocer said: “Well, madam, as far as I can recollect, the oozlum bird has been extinct for nearly two hundred years.” “Bight!” snapped the lady visitor, dumping a basket on the counter. “I want you to understand that 1 don’t want any of its eggs!”

An old lady who rarely went to the theatre was seated in the front row of

the pit endeavouring to see what was going on. A courteous young man, seeing she was short-sighted, drew his binoculars out and said: “Won’t you have a glass, madam?” The old lady looked gratified, and, glancing from left to right, slipped a handkerchief over the binoculars and placed them in her lap. A moment later she raised them to her lips. A flush came to tier cheeks, and she whispered to the young man angrily: “You’ve been making fun of me. There ain’t a blessed drop in the glass.”

agreeable associations. After he leaves Italy his pace becomes swifter, and we have glimpses of Sicily, Egypt, Ceylon, the Straits, New Caledonia, Pitcairn Island Peru, Chili, Buenos Ayres, and St. Vincent. Here he took a passage on a sailing vessel which brought him Its Melbourne. Back again in Sydney he touched the obelisk in Macquarieplaee, having been twice round the world since lie had set forth from that historical spot. Air. Collingridge’s narrative is sprinkled with many anecdotes and reports of conversations with interesting people, and his book is illustrated with a number of charming woodcuts.