APRIL FOODS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 167, 1 July 1911, Page 1 (Supplement)

APRIL FOODS.

Two students from an American college were strolling by tho side of a stream, when one of them caught the gleam of a small mefal box tying partly concealed under a jagged stone close to the bank. Their cuvio'rity being aroused as to its contents, they decided to investigate. Tho stream was two or throe foot deep, tho stone proved to bo heavier than its appearance indicated. and tho l ox was partly buried in gravel, so that considerable puffing, splashing, and damage to clothing took place before ’.he prize was landed. Opening it after considerable trouble, they found within a flat pice? of wood, at which they gazed in solemn silence. “If my reckoning, is correct.” remarked one of them at last, “this 1« the thirty-second of March.” “Ti’is is undoubtedly tin* day after the last day of March. Billy,” responded the other, gravely. The wood within the metal box wax thus inscribed : “Have the kindness to ieplace me, without needless delay, in tho nice, shiny metal box, and then carefully wedge us back under the big rock, so that wo can catch the eye of the next April fool that comes along.”

BOTH MISTAKEN. Hire Sistom. tho groat furniture king, having made his pile, had settled down to the pursuits of a. country gentleman Ho invited his friend. Plane Figger. tn make a stay with him. One day, armed with the latest appliances for dealing out sudden death to anything in the game lino, bo and his friend trudged over tho brown furrows, bnt at the end of three hours ■ hw were still looking for something to start the bag with. Suddenly a> ' co got up. Bang! camo from Hire s-istom. Bang! from Plane Figger, and . >r wont the four-footed one. ‘Mv hare!” shouted tho ex-furniture ? ,n S"Mv hare!” cried his friend. They argued for ten minutes as to whoso weapon had worked the mischief. Then the keeper was called up to adjudicate. “You’d take your oath it’s your ’are,, would you?’ ho turned to Hire Sisteni, ficrc-jy. “If necessary, certainly.” “And vou’d swear ’t-was your 'are?” tnwulentlv to Plano Figger. “I would.” "Thon tlonk yourself jolly lucky yon arc escaping seven years apiece for perjury ; ’cos it happens to bo my dog I” TOMMY ATK'NS IN EXILE. The British soldier knows more of exile than rny foreign “Tommy.” H<» has far more colonies to garrison, and longer terms to spend in them. Regiments have just returned to England—-the soldier calls it “blighty” —after sixteen, eighteen, and oven twenty years in India and the Colonies, for at tins time of year tho troopships tiro merrily plving between Great Britain and sv-'ry distant outpost that proudly flaunts a Union Jack. An-1 not always have regiments been, lelieved '■o often ns cnee m twenty years. For instance, with the exception of a brief two c.r throe years at homo, the old l!'th Foot was on foreign service from 1781 to 1820 -or thirty-nine years—during which time it took' part in no fewer than five campaigns. The old 40th Foot, however, went one better for it was continuously service for forty-six years.