ODDS AND ENDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9022, 7 April 1888, Page 4 (Supplement)

ODDS AND ENDS.

There are tricks in all trades—but ours. The man of brass is always ready to show his mettle. " Spodobs Volapuk" is explained to mean " Wβ correspond in Volapuk." It is absurd to say that hair-dye does not deceive anybody. It deceives the man who uses it.

Judge: "Madam, what is your age?" She: " Your Honor, I leave that to the mercy of the court." A physician says : " If a child does not thrive on fresh milk boil it." Few children can stand boiling. Love is like the measles; we can have it bad but once, and the later in life we have it the tougher it goes with us. " Of the dead nothing is left but the bones," is the way a certain doctor construed " De mortuis nil nisi bonum,"

" Lizzie, did the doctor propose to you today ?" " No, mamma ; he only asked if you would live with me after I got married. You never find a woman so economical that she will wear No. 8 gloves instead of 6's, simply because she gets more kid for the same money. " Talk of mothers-in-law and sons-in-law not agreeing," remarked Titmarsh ; "my mother-in-law and I agree. She says 1 ought never to have married her daughter, and I coincide with her."

The late George Benneb, Crown Prosecutor on the Munster Circuit, used sometimes to raise a laugh at the medical witness in the case of death by his interrogation, " Well, doctor, you attended the deceased ?" " Yes." " And he died accordingly." Dr. Grey, in his erudite and entertaining notes on Butler's " Hudibras," records the deposition of a lawyer, who, in an action for battery, told the judge that the defendent had beaten his client on the head with a certain wooden instrument called an iron pestle ! At a recent Methodist Convention in New York a member related a tale of two boys in his district. A donkey was passing by. Said one boy to the other : " Do you know what that is?" "Why, yes," the other answered, '' that is a donkey. I have often seen lots of them in the theological gardens." " I hope you will be able to support me," said a young woman, while walking out with her intended during a somewhat slippery state of the pavement. "Why, yes, replied the somewhat hesitating swain, " with a little assistance from your lather." There was some confusion and a profound silence.

"And whatever you do, Mary Anne," said a loving mother to her nursemaid, as the latter set out in charge of her two little children to walk in the Gardens on a rainy April day, " don't let nay darlings sit down on the wet graes. If they are tired and want to rest, you must sit down yourself upon the grass, and let them sit on your lap." At the burning of a provision shop recently the crowd helped themselves freely. One man grasped a huge cheese as his share of the plunder. Rising up with it he found himself face to face with a policeman, and with admirable presence of mind put the plunder into the officer's arms, saying: " You had better take care of that, policeman, or someone will be walking on with it." " I would like a position on the editorial staff of your journal," said Mr. Slimwit, uncovering his slender head as he bowed before the great man. "There is no staff position vacant just now," said the editor, kindly ; " but I can give you a special assignment." "Yes?" " Yes, indeed, and youTe just the man for it. I want somebody to pass himself off as an imbecile, and get into the Home for Feeble-minded to write up the abuses of the institution. You needn't waste time in training; go just as you are." Lord Campbell, in his "Lives of the Chancellors, tells us that when he first travelled from Edinburgh to London in the mail coach, the time was reduced from twelve to fourteen days—which the journey had previously occupied—to three nights and two days. " This new and swift travelling from the Scotch capital," he adds, " was wonderful, and I was gravely advised to stop a day or two at York, ae several passengers who had gone through without stopping had died of apoplexy from the rapidity of the motion." ,