ODDS AND ENDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9130, 11 August 1888, Page 4 (Supplement)

ODDS AND ENDS.

Motto for an Arab tribe"Up and Bedouin."

She : You can't eat cake and keep it." He : " Oh, yes, you can—the kind you make."

Rochester has a boy who, like George Washington, can't tell a lie. The reason is that, like George, he is dead. Adam never worried Eve by talking about his mother's cooking, and yet they found something to fall out about. "Will the coming man use both arms?" asks a scientist. Probably, if the coming woman can be trusted to hold the reins.

That was a bright youngster who, hearing his mother remark that she was fond of music, exclaimed : "Then why don't you buy me a drum ?" She : " Do you know Colonel Chester declares I Dm the handsomest picture in the academy." He: "Aw—yes; the colonel does say the most ridiculous things." Hood suggested that the phrase "republic of letters" was hit upon to insinuate that, taking the whole lot of authors together, they hadn't a sovereign amongst them.

" You may speak," said a fond mother, "about people having strength of mind, but when it comes to strength of don't mind my son William surpasses everybody I ever knew."

Patient (jumping from the dentist's chair and crying with anguish): "Oh!oh !oh ! ee ! I thought you pulled teeth without pain." Dentist (smiling pleasantly) : "So 1 do ; it don't hurt me any." " What makes you stand there grinning ?" asked ono traveller of another as they watched the Mexican volcano Colima belch forth in eruption. " Oh, I can't help it," returned the other, " it's so lava-ble."

Swell : " I'm going to resign from my club." Friend: "I thought you liked it so much." Swell: "Used to be all right, but society is getting too mixed. Why, I met my pawnbroker there the other night !" Miss Clara: "You say, Ethel, that you only paid lOd for having your gloves cleaned? Why, I was asked 15d." Miss Ethel (with a slight but not dangerous cough) : " Yes, I suppose the size is considered."

Stranger (to Indiana farmer): "It's a great pity that the crops through this section have been so badly damaged by rain." Indiana farmer (taking a sun bath) : " Wall, ya'as, mister, but it saves a durned sight o' work harvestin'."

A gentleman inetaboy and askedhim what o'clock it was. Being told that it was 12, he expressed some surprise, and said he thought it was more, " It's never any more in these parts, sir," said the boy, simply ; "it begins again at 1." Charles: " Mamma, to-day the teacher praised me." "Did he? What did he say to you?" "Well, he didn't exactly say much to me, but he said to my seat-mate, ' You are the greatest good-for-nothing in the whole class. I even think more of Charles than of you.' " Aunt Dinah: " Ef I wa' yo', Pomp, I'd try ter gib a job o' whitewash in'." Pompey : " Yo' jes' understan', Missus Dinah, dat I'se changed my perfushun. I'se done come out as a labour reformer." Aunt Dinah : " Den all I'se got ter say, Mister Pompey, is dat it's mighty lucky dat 1 owns a washtub." " It's just wonderful, Bromley, how Edison keeps on inventing things. He hasn't his equal in the world." " Darringer, I don't know about that. If my boy keeps on he'll beat Edison hollow. He's inventing something every day." " You don't say so ! Why, what does he invent ?" " Excuses." Value of money in Elizabethan era! Shakspere a practical economist! This is a discovery worth everything that Baconfed commentators have written. It is this :— (Jravedigger (to Hamlet): "A tanner will last you nine year." Now "a tanner," which within the present century was always sixpence ("two bob and a tanner" was the cabman's half-crown) was, perhaps, equal in Shakspere's time to about four times that amount.

Little Irene, when '20 months old, had a habit of asking strangers for pennies. Her mother told her she would punish her if she asked for any more. Next morning she went to a neighbour's house alone and said, "I s'pose you've got some pennies, Miss Griflie ?" Mrs. Griffin answered, "Yes." " Well," Irene says, "I s'pose you doing to teep 'em, ain't you ?" She got the pennies without asking for them.