Spray.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume 31, Issue 9220, 8 June 1900, Page 3

Spray.

■— A Dilemma. 'Tis a pitiful plight and I'm not quite . sure "What's the proper thing to- ' : V?S Or if my case has a radical cure .; But the fact is, I love two. 1 I see the blonde, and I vow that she ' j. Is the one I cannot forget ; ' But her vision pales quite visibly '-'.-f When I view the sweet, brunette. ■ ... V.: There is no help for me, I ween, ■ And I'm leading a double life ; ' For somehow I cannot quite choose,i between ' ■ ■ * My little girl and my wife. All Luck. ' *' Ef I had your luck and you had T" mine," said Dismal Dawson to one, of*.' his prosperous clients, " I s'pose It wouldv?; be me helpln' you." •' , " Luck ?" answered the prosperous*®; one. " I made all my money by hard work." '< "That's where the luck Aggers. You was borne with a likin' for work. I wasn't."—" Indianapolis Journal." jsf -)f About the North Pole. When Nansen reaches the North j..; Pole—lf he has not done so, already—':';' what kind of a place will he find it ? ;■* It may .be a land with a not unbear-% able. climate. It may be a- sea—a continuation of the Atlantic • Ocean, Cer- ■ tainly Arctic explorers have seen > distance " a water sky,"' Kane a.jT v' Hayes saw tidal waves ; and Parry, to>s his disappointment, found that the Ice- • field on which he was travelling southward as fast as he progressed 3:* northward. For a solution of this."mystery we must wait with .patience. No Longer Kids, ! Said a wife, " Won't you go up, dear| 1 and get my goats off the dressing •j, table?" ' " Tour goats ?" queried Jones j • " what new-fangled thing's that ?" "I'll show you," remarked the wife, - and she went upstairs and came down again with a pair of kids upon her • hands. '•' % "There they are," said she. . - "Why, I call those kids 1" Bald the." surprised husband. * 'C " Oh, you do ?" replied the wife. "So \ did I once ; (but they are so old now, I'm i'ashamed to call them anything' 'but ; goats." 1 , . Jones took the hint. * j London Theatres. With about twenty-five London West End theatres In full action, giving be-: tween four' and Ave thousand representatlons during last year (Bays a '- writer in the " Saturday Review"), I can hardly pick out thirty which I can i , describe as making reasonably endur-', able pastime ; whilst if you ask me how 1 ■ many of them'were of sufficient artist!J> value to Justify me in pretending that It matters a striw to any Londoner whether he saw them or not, I simply dare not answer you. All I will say is >' , that from most of them the public had i ' t nothing to learn, and the performers less ; so that we are not even Improving ; - the skill of our actors—quite the reverne, .in fact, Some futile., jjeis.ail- will here lntS~rapt-rh'e _, Dy asking whether I an such a fool as to suppose that the public goes' 'to the theatre to learn. I crusj# am that walker In darkness by a bald VS es." , .< Play-going Is at bottom as utilitarian- ai; > washing; and it'ls precisely because the managers have persisted in catering fora the voluptuary "and the sluggard . that the theatre Is. now so discredited, ,* Sobriety. ' ? Men no longer get drunk in dining? ; rooms or in the House of Commons, be-; ; i , cause It would nowadays' not be endured. But, as Sir William Gull says, « people may be injured by drink without being drunkards. What Is'the propor- ' tion of adult males who, after dinner, experience what an American poet has . described as " the warm-champagny, old-particular, brandy-punchy feeling"? > j Nothing is more striking than the - ', sobriety of Frenchmen, at. compared , with Englishmen and Americans, in their clubs. In the smartest clubs In Paris, where they play high, no one,, In v, the midst of his excltment ever asks the valet-de-pied for anything stronger than lemonade or sugared water. Rossetti. ' Rossetti—whose death Is still ,so recent an event in the memories of those who loved the man, and revered his genius—is already, to many of the young and ardent minds whom he has inspired) one of "an earlier race.". True, it is only fourteen years since he > died ; but in these fourteen years schools have come and gone, the new generation has made a clamorous knocking, and in the advent of " the new r__ order" so much dust hasi been stirred > that more than one heroic figure in the background has been temporarily* obscured. Those of us who may live 'far into the coming'century, p.s well as those who come after us, may penhapj be able to see more clearly the perspec- ~ tives of this wonderful Victorian era,' with all the, tumult o£ to-day no longer ■ audible, . Problems. An amusing periodical got up by the boys of Uppingham School gives a capi- , . , tal skit on the style of examination papers frequently presented - for the torture of pupils. Here are a few examples :—" If two men can kill two brace of partridges in going up the right , side of a rectangular turnlp-fieia, how many would be killed by five men and a terrier pup going down the other side ?" " If a milkmaid, four feet ten inches in height, while sitting on a threelegged stool, took four pints of njllk out of every fifteen cows, what was the size ' of the field in which the animals grazed, ■ and what was the girl's name, age, and the occupation of her grandfather ?" A Precocious Imagination. One Sunday morning not long ago; a certain young boy was playing with a small step-ladder. His mother saw what he was doing, and asked him what he was playing. •< ' "Oh," he said, "I'm playing this step- v ladder is my bicycle." i ; . ■ "But," replied the mother, "don't you know that it's wrong to ride a bicycle on Sunday?" "I know, mamma, but I'm playing I'm .s a Jew." Very Easily Explained. ' "Doctor," said an old lady the other day to her family physician, "can you tell me how it is that some folks are ';; born dumb?" "Why—hem—certainly, ihadam," replied the doctor. " "It is owing to the fact that they come 'nto the world without the faculty of speecn!" "Dear me!" remarked the old lady; "now just see what it Is to have a medical education! I've asked my husband more . - than a hundred times the same thing, and all that I could get out of lilm was, 'Because they are.' " ; * i _ - How She Came Off. He had been waltzing with his host's 1 daughter, and was In the corner repair- : i; ing damages. Here he was espied by his would-be papa-in-law. < _ "She's the flower of my family, "sir," said the latter. * "So it seems," answered the young man. "Pity she comes off so, ain't it?" he continued as 'he essayed another vigorous rub at the white spots on his ~., coat sleeve. , ", ...H 'n i'u • • i.I * .!,• v:i