VARIETIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 5680, 31 January 1880, Page 2

VARIETIES.

The manager of a church fair when asked if there would be mosic each evening, replied " No, but there will be singing." No matter how handsome a family monument a man may have in the cemetery, he never wants to lie on his back and look up at it. .

"Money does everything for a man," said an old gentleman, pompously. "Yea," replied the other one, " but money won't do as much for a man as some men will do foe money."

A lawsuit that lasted one hundred and eleven years has just been rettled in Hungary, much to the disgust of the younger members of the Bar.

When a man has a lot of shop-worn goods iu his store which he has tried to sell until he is all out of patience, ho marks them, "Job lot."

By what irony of fate was the founder o£ the barrel-organ manufacture named Blessing ? This Blessing has just died at the age of 81, and ought to have an epitaph. Fashion understands that a lady ia in a full-dress when the train of her garments covers her form, the spittoon, and three square of Brussels carpet at the same time. Leaving out the land lines, which connect all the civilized countries of the world with their neighbours, there are now over 70,000 milea of cables crossing the seas and oceans. The woman who can pretend to slip and sit down suddenly on her back-hair when she drops it on the street, possesses a coolness which would render her invaluable to an ice company.

Outside a photographer's shop in Edinburgh hangs the following announcement : "Highland costumes kept for gentlemen to be photograped in, and New Haven fishwives' costumes for ladies."

" If you admire a young lady, and wish to know her as she really is, call upon her in. the moraine;." —Dr. Franklin. Venerable shade, it will not do. When the morning comes it finds us already there. A five-cent cigar, says a Francisco paper, with, a good draught and an enterprising youth attached to the tail end of it, will load the immediate atmosphere with a fragrance that discounts a boneyard or a boot factory that barns its own scraps. A damsel was asked, ' When a lady and gentleman have quarrelled, and each considers the other in' fault, which of the two ought to be the first to. advance towards a reconciliation ?' Her reply was, ' The besthearted and wisest of the two.'

Tlie national debt o£ Great Britain is £777,781,598; France, £967,584,280 ;. Germany, general debt, £2,544,C53 ; Germany, railroad debt, £13,862,656. The consolidated annuities of England, known as " Consols," pay 4 per cent, per annum." The Duchess of Montrose can milk s cow, and recently demonstrated the fact to the admiration of the men in her husband's racing stable, who were less learned in farmyard arts than she. The society poets are sharpsning their.quills to do honour to the act.

A fine recumbent statue, a hermaphrodite, has just been discovered in Home in good preservation, five metres underground, la what used to be the gardens of the Villa Strozzi, and the Hotel Quirinale, where the foundations of the theatre Nazionale are being dug.

Village Doctor (to the grave-digger, who is given to whisky) :. " Ah, John! I'm sorry to see you in this pitiable condition again !" Grave-digger : "Toots, sir! lean ye no' let a'e little fau't o'mine gae by. It's mony a muckle ane o- yours I ha'e happit owre an' said naething aboot !"—Punch.

An ingenious experimentalist has discovered a capital exercise for those who have, unfortunately, an impediment in their speech. It is to repeat the words, " Stop-a-shop—shock-a-atop — stock-a-ahop," twelve times over rapidly without stopping. Whoever can say this can say anything,

A recent visitor at the Hospice of St. Bernard says the eight dogs now there are anything but attractive specimens of the noble breed. One had-lost an-eye,. another was lame, and another was' so fat that he could scarcely waddle along. Yet they have this season rescued twenty, persons from perishing in the snow.

A gentleman was one day relating to a Quaker a tale of deep distress, and concluded •very pathetically by saying, I could not but feel for him." " Verily, friend," replied the Quaker, " though didst 'right in that thou didst feel for thy neighbour ; but didst thou feel in the right place—didst thou feel in thy p dcket.?"

They were husband and wife, and as they stood for a moment she asked. What's the figure on'the top?! 'That's a goddess?' ho answered.; 'And what's a goddess?' 'A. woman who holds her tongue,' he replied. She looked at him sideways, and began planning how to- make a plum-pie with the stones in it for the benefit of his bad tooth.

A monument to Adam.has been prefected ia Elmira, New York, which will be Heventy feet high, and Mark Twain is to write the inscription. Why a monument to Adam and none to Eve ?- He was not half as brave, after the detection of his crime, as was Eve, and played a senrvey part in the affair when he was found out as a breaker of the law.

Sir Walter Scott gave, on August 14j 1525, to Maria Edgeworth, the pen-holder with which he had written tlie V Heart of Midlothian " —all his novels, ia fact, up to that time. Its present possessor is Dr. Butler, of Harrow. The MSS. of the "Black Dwarf," "Peveril of the Peak," "Woodstock," " Fortunes of Nigel," are all owned by Mr. John Ruskin. ' ,

At a recent dinner given in New York the apples placed upon the table were computed, we are told, to have cost as much as eighteen dollars each. As for the peaches,-they bore the monogram of their owner traced distinctly in the ■ velvety Klooro. ■ The process is described thus: —Letters cut from paper are pasted on the peaches while growing. When the frait is ripe, on removing the paper, the letters are found picked out in the moat delicate green, the rest of the fruit bsinsj rosy and deep-hued..... _V\ When poor Edward Kean was acting in barns, barely finding.bread for his wife and child, he .was just as great a genius as when he /was - crowding Drury: Lane. Wllen Brougham presided in the House of Lords, he was not a bit better or greater than when he hung about in the Parliament House at Edinburgh, a Briefless and suspected, junior barrister. And when George Stephenson died, he was the same man, maintaining the same principle, as when men of science and of law regarded, as a mischievous, luiatio the individual who declared that .some day the railroad would be the king's highway, and miil-coache3 would be by a^eam,