ODDS AND ENDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8670, 12 September 1891, Page 4 (Supplement)

ODDS AND ENDS.

•Hk (poetical) : "Ah,'who can express the power of love?" She (practical) : "I can. It's two-donkey power." lie : " I didn't get your last letter." She (pouting) : " And I sent you a kiss in it." lie : " How unbusiness like you are ! Don't you know that letters containing valuables should bo registered ?" Ho was allowed to kiss away the pout. A Glasgow man, who recently went on a yachting excursion to the Western Isles for the lirst time, says he had no great opinion of his capacity for seamanship at starting, bur, when he was one day out he felt as if he could heave up the anchor. " My friends,'' remarked the minister, " the collection to-day will be devoted to my travelling expenses, for I am going away for my health ; the more I receive the longer I can stay," and, strange to say, the largest collection ever made was then taken up. -Many mothers are either compelled to stay away from church or take their babies with them. A poor woman took her little one in her arms to hear a London preacher. The loud voice from the pulpit awoke the child, and made ib cry, and its mother gob up and was leaving, when the preacher stopped her by saying, " My good woman, don't you go away; the baby doesn't disturb me." "It isn't for that, sir, 1' leave," she replied ; " it's you disturb the baby." Who says the good old " bull" is dead ? A Cambridge professor, whose nationality we need not particularise, delivered himself of the following not long ago :—"lt is impossible for two musical associations to flourish in this town unless one of them be extinct." Surely this gentleman must be some relation of the Indian surgeon who delivered the career of some fast young ollicers thus: —" They bloat themselves with beer, and they poison themselves with brandy. They get fever and die, and then they write home and tell their friends it is the climate."

The inundation-of 1701, which swept away a great .part of the old Tyne Bridge, Newcastle, was long remembered and alluded to as " the flood." On oneoccasion Mr. Adam Thompson was put into the witness-box at the a.-sizes. The counsel, asking his name, received for answer, " Adam, —Adam Thompson." " Where do you live?" "At Paradise, sir." Paradise is a village about a mile and a-half west of Newcastle. "And how long have you dwelt in Paradisecontinued the barrister. " Ever since the flood," was the reply, made in all simplicity and with no intention to raise a laugh. It is needless to say the Judge asked for an explanation. An American bookseller lias given Mr. Freeman one of the sharpest rebukes his cocksuieness ever received. In ISG3 the English historian published the first volume of his "History of Federal Government." But he had the ill-luck to play the part of prophet in the title, which ran thus: —" A History of Federal Government, from the Foundation ot the Achaian League to the Disruption of the United States." An American bibliopole, in advertising a copy of this book as for sale, appended to the entry in his catalogue the following note :— "Owing to the fact that the disruption of the United States has been indefinitely postponed, no second volume of this interesting work has ever appeared."