ODDS AND ENDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9142, 25 August 1888, Page 4 (Supplement)

ODDS AND ENDS.

Passenger (on street car, alarmed): " Madam, do you feel a fit coming on ?" Madam (haughtily): " No, sir ; I'm trying to find my pocket." Pipes for anybody :Citizen(to stranger): "What are your politics, my friend?" Stranger : " I have no politics this year ; I'm leader of a brass band." Miss Ethel: " But surely, Clara, you wouldn't marry a man for his money ?" Miss Clara: "Certainly not, er—that is unless he was a very old man." Mistress of the house : " Did you tell the lady I was out, Blivins ?" Blivina : " Yis, mum." " Did she seem to ?" "No, mum. She said she knew you wasn't." You never hear the bee complain, Nor hear it weep and wail ; But if it wish it can unfold A very painful tail. " Discrepancies in my accounts ?" repeated the bank cashier, indignantly ; "not a bit of it. The accounts are all right to a mill. The trouble is with the cash. ' Edison's agent: "Wouldn't you like to buy a phonograph ? It will store up everything you say and repeat it to you. Want one?" Omaha man : " No, got a wife." A lucid explanation :—Teacher (to class) : " In this stanza what is meant by the line, ' The shades of night were falling fast ?'" Bright scholar : "The people were pulling down the blinds."

" Dr. Hammond says that death is not a necessity." "Does he? Well, I have just finished settling up Harkins' estate, you know, and judging from the undertaker's bill I paid, I'm prepared to agree with him. It's a luxury." A health writer says " the washtub is an excellent gymnasium." But will our young ladies take kindly to it ? As Mr. Bacon says in Shakspere's works, " Ay, there the rub." And it is the "rub" that makes the washtub unpopular as a gymnasium. " And if I should die, dear," said a sick husband, "will you sometimes visit my grave?" "Yes, John," she replied, brok enly, "every pleasant Sunday afternoon, and I will take the children. Poor little things, they don't have very much to enjoy- J) JO>. Sisters enough :—She had promised to be a sister to him. He thanked her coldly, but said that he already had five sisters. " Why, Mr. Sampson,'' said the girl, "I thought you were an only child." "lam," he responded; "1 mean that I have five sisters such as you offer to be," and he tottered, to the door.

"John," said the wife, tenderly, "promise me that if I should be taken away you will never marry Nance Tarbox." " Certainly, Maria," replied the husband, reassuringly. " I can promise you that. She refused me three times when I was a much handsomer man than I am now."

" Yes," said the sweet girl graduate in a burst of confidence, " my education is now complete, butstilllam not altogether happy. Mamma and papa, unfortunately, nave a habit of pronouncing their words so oddly, and they know so little of polite literature and the sciences, you know, that it really is quite a hardship for me to associate with them."

A commercial traveller while going a journey on the railway, wishing to take a rise out of a clergyman who occupied the same compartment, asked him if he ever heard that in Paris as often as a priest was executed a donkey was hanged at the same time. The victim of the joke replied in his blandest manner : " Well, then, let us both be thankful that we are not' in Paris. There was loud laughter on the part of the fellow-passengers. Our commercial changed carriages at the next station. A fatal error prevented :—Fond mother : " lam very glad you are so happily married, my eon. What are you going into this store for?" Son :" A little surprise for my wife. I'm going to buy her the most elegant dress I can find." Fond mother : " My Bon, do you wish your wife to look up to you, ' respect you, and always defer to your judgment?'' Son: "I hope she will. Fond mother: " Then never select anything for her to wear. Let her do her own shopping."

"Are you the horse editor inquired an innocent-looking young woman, approaching the desk of that functionary. " I have the pleasure, miss," he replied, taking off his hat. "Can you answer : all sorts of questions about horses?" "Well, I rather think I can," he said, with a prideful swell in his bosom. Oh, I an; so glad," shq twittered. " Will you tell me the difference between a bay horse and a sea horse ?" As she went out of the office she smiled back at him, but he sat gloomily at his desk and said nothing.