ODDS AND ENDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 7002, 26 April 1884, Page 4 (Supplement)

ODDS AND ENDS.

Anyone may do a casual act of good nature, but a continuation of them shows it is a part of the temperament " Will you have oaf a noir or cafe au hut ?" asked the hostess of Mrs. Parvenu the other evening, the hostess "having just returned from Earope." " I guess," answered Mrs. Parvenu, wearily, "X guess I won't take neither—them French puddinß is so awful fillin', you know, and I've eat now more than I'd oughter." A young lady.having "set her cap" for a rather large apecimen of the opposite sex, and having failed to win him, was telling her sorrows to a couple of her confidants, when one of thera comforted her with these words : — " Never mind, Mollie ; there are as good fish in the saa as ever were caught." "Mollie knows that," replied her little brother J " but she wants a whale 1" Yves Guyot, the Paris journalist, tells how King Louis XVIII., when here turned from exile asked Fouch6if his movements had been watched by spies. Fouche" admitted that the Duke de - Blacas had been so employed. " And how much did yon give him ?" asked Louis. "Two hundred thousand livres?" was the reply._ "Good," said the monarch, "I find he did not cheat me. We went halves." The landlord of a village tavern stood at his door fondly gazing at his newly-put-up sign of the Golden Lamb, -which specimen of zoology swung lazily over his door. "Good morning, friend James," said a passing rustic; " what be you thinking of ?" "I was thinking, " said the host, "as how the lamb is a picture of innocence." "Yes, friend James; but that one of yours is a picture of giit." An American Justice of the Peaoe who is constantly trying criminal cases was called upon to marry a couple. After he had askad the usual question, if they desired to be united in the bonds of matrimony, and they had replied in the affirmative, the Justice said solemnly," Having pleaded guilty to'the charge, if there are in your opinion any mitigating circumstanoes, now is the time to state what they^re." One Sunday, as a certain Scottish minister was returning homewards, he was accosted by an old woman, who said : "Oh, sir, well do I like the day when you preach!" The minister was aware tbat he was not very popular, and he answered, "My good woman, lam glad to hear it! There are too few like you. And why do you like when I preach ?'* '' Oh, sir," she replied, " when you preach I always get a good seat I" Archbishop Whately was onoe endeavouring to elicit the ideas of an Irish candidate for the office of teacher on the market value of labour with reference to demand and supply ; but, being baffled, the prelate put a question in this simple form : "If there are in your village two shoemakers with just sufficient employment to enable them to live comfortably, or, say, tolerably, and no more, what would follow if a third shoemaker set up in the same village?" "Why, a fight, sir 1" said the candidate. ">

A darkey, on the approach of a storm, was sent out to drive in some mules, and while he was out the lightning struck a tree near him, and he was knocked senseless. He was carried home, and restoratives were applied. "■Well, Jim," said the farmer, when, .he, opened his eyes, "do you feel better now?" "Yes, boss, I does." "It was a narrow escape, Jim." ■ "I spec it was, boss; but I didn't have no idea dat I was so close to dat mule's heels. I oughter knowed dat yer can't trust a mule nohow." . Horace Mayhew once joined a league for the suppression of '' tips" to waiters. Lunching one day, he began to feel nervous as the time for paying the bill arrived, but finally mustered courage to say, "William I am sorry for. you ; but I have joined the Notippers." y Well, Mr. Mayhew," answered William mildly, " as you are an old customer, I don't mind telling you that I have joined a rum lot too. We've bound ourselves to upset hot dißhes by hacoident. over the legs of stingy customers." "Gentlemen," said the professor to his medical students, assembled in olinic. "I have often pointed out to you the remarkable tendency in consumption of those who play upon wind-instruments. In this case now before us we have a well-marked development of lung disease, and I was not surprised to find, on questioning the patient, that be is a member of a brass band. Now, sir," continued the professor, addressing the consumptive, "will you please tell the gentleman what instrument you play on?" "I blays der drum," said the sick man.