A FEW DROLLERIES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LVI, Issue 6473, 25 November 1881, Page 3

A FEW DROLLERIES.

(Bnjlwh Kaj<ute«.) A few years ago a capital picture appeared in Punch, which was meant to represent not exactly the incident as I here depicted, but the victim’s sensations one moment later. A gentleman, naturally of * shy and nervous disposition in society, has been invited to a children's party. Like many quiet and retiring men, he is very fond of the youngsters, and is a great acquisition at their festivities, from his many ingenious resources for entertaining them. He generally contrived to come into a room in some novel and amusing manner, and it is in pursuit of this object that we see him in the picture. He has run up-stairs, and entered the drawing-room, unannounced, on all-fours. There he is, head down, coat-tails flying up over his shoulders, and revealing more waistband and linen than are usually visible to the eye in that situation, prancing and scrambling round the room. But, unfortunately, hie hospitable little friends live in a terrace where the houses are all alike, and he has gone to the wrong one by mistake. The children, who know him so well, all agog with expectation, are awaiting him next door. There happens to be an evening party at both houses, only this one is of the most severely “grown-up" description. When he rises from bis extraordinary gambols presently, this shy man will find imself in the midst of a roomful of strange ladies and gentlemen, whose surprise will certainly be more than equalled by his confusion.

“ It is even better than Leech's old drawing of the little stont gentleman who has undertaken for a wager to jump over a hayoook. He accomplishes the feat, and is represented descending in mid-air, having just cleared the top gallantly. And it is at this exact moment —or rather fraction of a moment—that his observation grasps with lightning rapidity the fact that below him are a very loving conple, all unconscious of bis advent, and picknicking sweetly together on a large veal-pie, into which he will drop like a meteor. “ Nothing would ever induce me to touch a reptile, of my own free-will: they disgust, they horrify |me!’’ said a gentleman to bis friend and doctor, with whom be occasionally dined, and who, while exhibiting his pet, snakes and lizards, had been endeavouring to impress the fact that habit is everything, and that constant association with these creatures soon removes that loathing—quite distinct from fear—with which they are almost univerally regarded. “ My dear fellow," quoth the doctor, “I will lay you a guinea that, within one month, you shall consent of your own free-will, not merely to touch, but even to taste a reptile!" The challenge was at first resented as an absurdity,an insult to common-sense; but. eventually the bet was accepted. There was much bantering on the subject for some days, and yon may be sure the reptile-hater kept a sharp look-out, and carefully scrutinised any dish whose contents wore a “ froggy" aspect to his roused imagination, when eating in the doctor’s company. The latter, however, knew the kind of man he had to deal with when he made the bet; and he attempted no practical jokes. The interest of the affair was beginning to die out, and it bad ceased to he a theme of conversation between them, beyond an occasional passing reflrence, when one morning they met in the street, about three weeks after the wager was laid. “ Ton don’t look well,” said the mao of medicine —his professional compliment, with an eye to business. “Liver out of order—eh? What did yon do with yourself last night ?" “Oh, I'm all right!" was the.ready response, in deprecation of the possible eightounce bottle and little circular pill-box looming the foreground of the future. “Neverfelt better; generally look pole in the morning.—Do last night P I dined at the Blanks’ Hallmentioning a noted Livery Company, celebrated for its princely civio dinners. “ Dined with the Blanks, did you ? Then depend upon it, my hoy, yoor liver is ont of order. Now, let ns see. 'What did yon eat?”

11 Well, nothing to upset me, that I know of. I took some soup, and a little bit of ’ “Stop, stop a moment! What soup?” asked the doctor. “Turtle.”

“ I thought go. Trouble you for one pound one for tasting reptiles; and I’ll write you a prescription for your liver on the strength of it.”

It required a good deal of explanation and looking up of authorities before the friend “saw it;” but he wasconvincedatlast. “Take the guinea,” he said ruefully; “ but keep your prescriptions for those who don’t mind being poisoned!” A good story is told in the States of an agent who travelled on commission for a firm of tombstone manufacturers. Expressions of monumental grief in iron, in marble, in wood, even in vulcanite and paper, had he ; urns, cherubs, wreaths, columns, willows, angel, pillars—cenotaphs in every style, from the florid mausoleum which tearless regret might raise to the golden memory of a selfmade millionaire, to the small flat cake, devoid of cross or ornament, destined to map out the ashes of a Quaker’s child. Not that he carried “stock" with him; but ho had elaborate drawings and designs, with prices specified underneath, from which the customers could make their selection, according to their taste, means, or depth of woe. Orders were scarce, however; customers were few, and disinclined to launch out boldly in their speculations in this peculiar form of art. Americans are a practical people, and a gravestone can be hardly looked upon as a good investment for capital, from a business point of view. Times were beginning to get hard with the poor agent; so that when he one day overheard somebody talking of a farmer in an outlying district who had recently lost his wife, he pricked up his ears, and lost no time in repairing to the vicinity indicated. A long journey it was, and a rough one; and when ho had accomplished the eleven miles which he believed would have brought him to his destination, it was only to be told that he bad been misinformed, and that his quarry resided seven miles off, in another direction. So he tramped the balance of his journey, eighteen solid miles in all, over broken ground, half-made roads, and ploughed fields. When he arrived at the farmhouse, he found that the farmer was at work on another part of the estate — one mile more; so he decided that he must not wait for him at the house, or ho would fail to reach the nearest town before nightfall. At length he ran the bereaved husbandman to earth—literal!, to earth, for he was discovered in a most secluded spot, in company with several labourers, all very busy with their spades. To the ‘boss’our agent made advances with all the sliced his weary limbs would allow, commencing to explain the nature of his errand, while unfolding his prospectus, by saying that he regretted to near that the farmer had lately lost his wife, and offering a few well-chosen words of condolence thereon. The object of his sympathy thanked him civilly enough, though not without a slight manifestation of surprise and annoyance* Yc*j, it waa quite true, he said ; he had lost his wife—in fact, she had bolted with another {man some six weeks before. Here followed sundry hearty expressions on the part of the bereaved husband respecting his wishes for the future welfare of ‘ the pair of ’em,’ wbioh the commission agent did not wait to hear in detail A cobbler, an idle, dissolute fellow, who plied his trade in a certain village near which passes the main line of the Great Western Bail way—then lately constructed—used to spend a great part of his leisure time—which meant that portion of the twenty-four hours not actively employed in eating, sleeping, or tippling, in sitting on a fence watching for the trains. When one iron monster had gone thundering by, he was content to sit there, doing nothing, thinking nothing, and wait listleesly the two or three hours which elapsed before the next was due; for, as we have said, the milway was a novelty in these parts then. One day. os he lounged there, idlyturningover a fourpenny-pieoem coin, especially when his prospects of getting another aresomowhat hasy, so, without any further reflection, this son of Crispin put the

money on the shining rail. The clank end roar of a luggage train were already audible in the distance, and he awaited the result with some curiosity. On came the engine slowly labouring, and puffing hearily with the immense weight behind it. The waggons rattled past, and were gone. Could that be his fourpenny bit? Why, it was expanded to the size of a sixpence, and looked so much like an old and well-worn specimen of t.W coin, that ——. Yes; he resolved to try it —quietly, of course, not to incur unpleasant consequences. Wending his way to the village alehouse, he called fora pot of that refreshing fluid, and tendered in exchange the metamorphosed fourpence, which in its value at par, so to speak, would hare been the exaet equivalent for the beer. Nothing felonious about that, as far as external appearances went, certainly; though, when twopence change was received and accepted, a vista opened before his mind’s eye. It was no longer a dream engendered bj luggage-trains and thirst in fortuitous combination with a solitary fourpenny-bit, but a fait accompli. Fifty per cent on all available capital for life, easily realised without risk, without fail. Here was a discovery! He went out of the beer-shop, feeling already like a moneyed man I

We have spoken of the fonrpenny piece as a solitary com, and so it was, as far as bis pockets were concerned ; but the reader is not to assume that it expressed the sum total of his worldly wealth. Mrs Crispin, who wag rather a shrew, always laid violent hands on her husband's cash when she got the chance, which was not often, and so managed to keep a small reserve fund for household expenses, and for the purchase of leather implements for the working thereof, when necessary. This little store he managed to extort from her by vague and magnificent assurances of an immediate increase to be effected through some mysterious agency, the nature of which nothing would induce h™ to reveal. For three whole days he kept comparatively sober ; and having pawned such items of the furniture as he could contrive to smuggle out of the house when his wife's back was turned, he found himself possessed of nearly five pounds in ready money. It was a sore temptation to pass by the red curtained bar of the public-house with such an amount almost throbbing in his pockets; bat he resisted manfully ; and walked to a neighbouring town to change the larger coins, little by little, for those small piece l , which now appeared to him to be the embodiment of all that was desirable in the coinage of the realm. At last, the exchanges were negotiated in fall, and charged with fonrpenny pieces to the extent of several pounds, he was ready for the grand experiment. That it must be performed at night was plain, since it would never do to be seen engaged in such a task by any of his acquaintance. There would be no difficulty about this, however, ae the down express flashed by forty minutes after midnight. At the witching hour, therefore, when all the village slumbered, Crispin stole off to the scene of action with his bag of silver and a lantern ; and having carefully arranged the coins in two rows, half on one rail and half on the other, clambered up to his accustomed perch on the fence, and awaited the arrival of the train with a beating heart. A whisper in the air—a tremour of the earth—a nimble, a roar, a shriek—a delirium of fiery eyee, thunder, lightning, and earthquake—a whirlwind of steam and dust—two red lights disappearing in the distance.

' He dashes up the bank with his lantern to secure his newly minted sixpences, hot —. They were gone! Hot a vestige of one remained! Whether the greater speed had anything to do with it—whether there was any greasy composition on the tires—or whether the enormous friction produced by the long and rapid journey had heated them till they were adhesive in themselves, was never explained ; but certain it is that every groat of the cobbler’s fortune had gone to silverplate the wheels of a railway engine! A friend of the writer’s some time ago joined an amateur fire-brigade which had just been organised in the country town where he resided. Amateur fire-brigades, like most other amateur undertakings, are fins things —for the amateurs themselves; splendid exercise, conspicuous uniform, innocent enjoyment in every way; for if they don’t do much for the community at large, at least they don’t harm themselves. To “ keep cool,” is every amateur fireman’s private and personal motto, which he carries ont religiously; and a very nice motto too. Onr friend B—— was perhaps the exception which proves the rule, and in his infraction of it, constituted himself an awful warning. There conld be no doubt about it that he and his brigade went in for playing at fires with downright good-will. They had helmets and axes and a Captain and an engine; and such was the fervour of the enthusiasm which burned within them, that at times they could control themselves no longer, but would arise, don their helmets, and taking their engine, would spout water about the streets, run madly backwards and forwards with a long tube, mount ladders, shout, and save each other out of first-floor windows, without obvious cause or provocation thereto. Their frenzy used to reach an especial pitch outside girls’ schools; and such prodigies of valour were performed under the stimulus of those bright and admiring eyes, that every man almost persuaded himself that he was smoke-begrimed. Then they would adjourn for beer, after these violent demonstrations and become more heroic than ever. They were also possessed of a fire-escape, with which they had defaced most of the corner buildings in the town, owing to a distressing tendency which it had to lower itself unexpectedly from an upright to a horizontal position when in motion. How they longed for a real conflagration! That their zeal would have culminated in arson before long, is far from improbable, had not the news arrived one evening post-haste that there was a house on fire in the next town, about a mile off. Their joy and excitement on the receipt of this intelligence knew no bounds. They rang their bell—they had such a bell .'—they blew whistles, and threw on their uniform, yelling “ Fire!’’ all the time. But B , who suffered from the mania more acutely than any of them, could not brook the delay of waiting while the engine got underweigh, but mounting a horse, galloped off headlong to the scene of the disaster, axe, helmet, and all! Arrived there he lost not a moment in procuring a ladder; and ascending amid the cheer* of the assembled spectators, he cut away the framework of a window, entered a smoky room, rushed upstairs, and brought down two children, who were passed safely down the ladder, frightened but unhurt; while B was greeted with thunders of applause by the crowd on his re-appearance. He entertained the brigade that night at a champagne supper, at which they all sat down in their warpaint ; and before going to bed made some notes for a treatise “ On the Best Means of of saving life at fires,” which he intended to publish immediately. And now comes the denouement.

The next merning he received a bill of thirty-seven and sixpence from the owner of the house, for damage done to the window frame. It was nothing but a chimney afire, said this vulgar man j and if it had not been for his unnecessary interference, the children would not hive been disturbed m their sleep at all If he wanted to coma in. there was nothing whatever to prevent him from knocking at the front door, and entering m the usual manner. And ho had to pay for it! He has given up amateur firemanship entirely now, and goes in eiclusweJyJor botany ; and the odds are against hu gome up a ladder again to prevent a holocaust of writer of this—am the victim of a small “sell” just now, which I have unwittingly inflicted on myself. Some one showed me a loaded cigar the other day—one of those foolish and dangerous things whiem explode like a squib m the smoker » month -which I begged, and put in my pocket, intending to let it off the same night for the amusement of some children. But I forgot all about it; and finding the cigar a da J “f two afterwards, I laid It amongst * number of others before I remembered »te natw Now, I cannot distmguuh it from yert. and in consequence Bin af»*d ona wtn t or offer any to a fnend. Doe. any one w to buy half a box of real Havanas, cheap r