ODDS AND ENDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8508, 7 March 1891, Page 4 (Supplement)

ODDS AND ENDS.

A woman is never so badly in love that she does nob try to ascertain the cost of her engagement ring. "Does your daughter play on the piano?" " Waal, she says she does, bub I kinder think she works on it." There is hardly any man so friendless in this world that he hasn't at least one friend ready to tell him his faults. Briggs : "I did not see you at church last Sunday?" Braggs : "No; I didn't get in until you had gone to sleep." Mrs. Wiseman : " Isn't your husband a little bald ?" Mrs. Hendricks (indignantly): " There isn't a bald hair on his head." It is a sign that her husband is making money when a woman begins to get the look on her face of looking at you without seeing

you. Woman doesn't bother much about the seven ages of manor,. rather, woman. When she gets to thirty, she abolishes the other six.

"Come and dine with me to-morrow." "Afraid I must decline—l'm going to see 'Hamlet.'" " Never mind —bring him with you." First tradesman : " Is ho a gentleman Second tradesman: " Well, I suppose so. I know he doesn't pay his debts till you make him do so."

Waiter (handing bill of fare): "Like to look at the menu, sir?" Farmer: "Noa, noa. Bring us summat to eat. I never reads the paper while I'm a-feeding." Temperance worker (to a man about to take a drink): " Do you know that there are pernicious microbes in beer?" Man (afterdrinking) : "Happy microbes." Fair customer (who has been a good hour in the shop without buying anything) : "Have you nothing else you can show me?" Shopman : "Yes, madam, the door !" Sucei, the Italian faster, says the hardest part of his fasting is the annoyance he is subjected to by cheap wits, who ask all J sorts of insane questions, and are disappointed if similar answers are not forthcoming. " Mamma, do you know, now that we are engaged, I sometimes actually get tired of George's being everlastingly around the house every evening, as he is?" "Don't let that worry you, my dear; marriage will cure him of that little fault, along with I many others." " Why don't the women propose?" is a vexed question just now. The answer is | popularly supposed to be that the fair ones prefer to have the last word. Colley Gibber's son one day begged his father to give him one hundred pounds. "It is very sirangc," sr.id Colley, "that you can't live upon your salary. When I was your age, I never spent any of my father's money." "Perhaps not," answered the son ; "but I am sure you have spent many hundred pounds of my father's money." " Charlie dear, what is a monopoly ?" she asked, looking up tenderly, as she rested submissively in his arms, with her dainty head nestled against his coat collar. "Well," replied Charlie, manfully struggling to bring his mind to cope with abstruse subjects, and failing to get beyond concrete facts, "1 sincerely hope that this is." An inquisitive man said to Dumas, " You are a quadroon?" " I believe I am, sir," said Dumas. " And your father ?" " Was a mulatto." "And your grandfather?" " Negro," hastily answered the dramatist. "And may I inquire what your greatgrandfather was?" " Anape, sir," thundered

Dumas ; "yes, sir, an ape; my pedigree commences where yours terminates." A barrister asked Lord Mansfield when a certain case would be tried. "Next Friday." " Will you consider, my Lord, that, next Friday will be Good Friday " I don't-care for that," said Lord Mansfield; •' tho better the day, the better tho deed." " Well, my Lord, if you sib on that day you will be the first judge who did business on that day since Pontius Pilate's time." A man in the Midlands married a wife who in course of time presented him with 18 children. One evening he found in a street near to that in which he lived a little boy of five or six weeping bitterly. " What is the mutter with the little man—eh?" inquired he, caressing him. " I have lost my way !" sobbed the youngster. " Then come homo with me and I'll trive you something to eat and take care of you." Accordingly the kind-hearted man took the little fellow home and said to his wife, " See, wife, I have brought you this child that I found in the street. One more or less won't make much difference, and if nobody claims him we will treat him as if he were our own." " Why, you stupid," exclaimed the wife. " Don't you know him ? It's our Willy !''