The Arm Chair.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 177, 21 November 1874, Page 3

The Arm Chair.

An affecting sight—barrels in tiers. # - A papfr containing many line points—a paper of needles. The man who works with a “will”—The prohate judge. “ Quite a hail-storm, last night,” remarked a guest to a California landlord, as he came down stairs the other morning. “No, only a few of the boys shooting at a Chinaman, and the balls rattled against the house.” In Minnksoto is a most extensive manufactory of Limburger cheese. One hundred and twenty cows contribute to the formation of the article. It is said that the cheese is considered “ripe” when ajiiece the size of a bean will drive a dog out of a tan-yard. What relation is a loaf of bread to a locomotive? You’ll never guess it. Bread is a necessity, a locomotive is an invention. Now as necessity is the mother of invention, the maternal relation of a loaf to a locomotive will be seen at once. A Philadelphia clergyman hopes the Lord will forgive him when lie announces : “ Let us continue our worship this morning by listening to a piece of sheet music which the hired quartett will please A judge says that marrying revokes a man’s will. This is no news. When will the Bench give us something original? Precious few men ever stay married long without finding out that they have no will of their own. Learnedly : Any one who desires to speak of the Siamese twins learnedly will call them Xiphogages of the class of Teratanacatodidyma—or for short, Ophelophagus Xiphodidymus— and return thanks to the Philadelphia lawyers. In Maori mythology, Tane and Tangaroa were sons of Rang! and Papa, or the Heavens and the Earth, from the union of which man first sprung. The forest represent Tane, and the ocean Tangaroa ; therefore, Tane is said to have ruled over the forest and its birds and insects, and Tangaroa over the ocean and its finny tribe. American hotel proprietors wlio don’t advertise in the papers are sure to hear of it. This is the way, for example, in which a New York journal refers to a certain hostelry:—“ Mosquitos were at the Palisade Mountain House last week, but found nobody to operate upon but colored servants. That was asking too much. They left.” A Boy’s Letter.—The following is a letter addressed by a schoolboy to his father : “My dear Papa— I write to you to-day, Monday ; I shall give my letter to the carrier who will set out to-morrow, Tuesday ; he will arrive the day after to-morrow, Wednesday ; you will seed me, if you please, some money on Thursday ; if I do not receive any on Friday, I shall set out on Saturday to get home on Sunday.” To morrow, you will live, you always cry. In what far country does this morrow lie ? To-morrow, I will live, the fool doth say ; To-day’s itself too late —the wise live yesterday. “A tinrenn y, your honour,” exclaimed a sturdy beggar at a carriage door to a Scotchman with fiery ringlets, but who was quite insensible to the appeal; “ a fipenny, your honour ; a fipenny, or a penny, or a halfpenny, plase ye.” Finding the Scot inexorable, the beggar altered his tone, and said, “ Will your honour plase to lend me a lock of your hair to light my pipe with.”

DEMOCRITUS AT BELFAST. [prom punch.] (See report of Professor Tyndall’s inaugural discourse to the British Association.) Tyndall, high-perched on speculation’s summit, May drop his sounding-line in Nature’s ocean ; But that great deep has depths beyond his plummet, The springs of law and life, mind, matter, motion. Democritus imagined that the soul Was made of atoms spheric, smooth and'fiery. Plato conceived it as a radiant whole— A heavenly unit, baffling man’s inquiry. Indolent gods, immeasurably bored— Beyond the blast of Boreas and Eurus— Too lazy men to punish or reward ; Such was the heaven conceived' by Epicurus. If, as the wide-observant Darwin dreams, Man be development of the Ascidian, Metliinks his great deeds and poetic dreams Scarce square with this molluscous pre-mcridian. But even as Milton’s demons, problem-tossed— When they had set their maker at defiance— Still “ found no end in wandering mazes lost,” So is it with our modern men of science. Still in the “ open sesame ” of law, Life’s master-key- professing to deliver, But meeting with deaf ear or scorn-clenched jaw Our question, “ Doth not law imply law-giver ?” Betwixt the garden and the portico, Thou vacillating savant often flittest. And, when we seek the source of law to know, Giv’st us a phrase “ survival of the fittest.” Pray, who may he the fittest to survive The spark of thought for coming time to kindle— The sacred fire of science keep alive ? Plato, Agassiz, Humboldt, Huxley, Tyndall ? If Tyndall’s last word be indeed the last Of hope and faith, hence with each rag and tatter ! A black cloud shrouds our future as our past. Matter’s the wise man’s god, the crowd’s —no matter!

The Baron de X. was a miser to the extremity of meanness. He was at “ daggers drawn” with his nephew, who was his heir, and, moreover, a spendthrift. Finding his end approaching, the Baron called his valet. “ Here,” said he, “are ten sous ;go and buy me a sheet of stamped paper. I wish to make a will disinheriting my nephew.” “ But, Monsieur, stamped paper is now twelve sous a sheet.” “ Twelve sous ! Heavens, it is too dear ! I would rather let my scoundrel of a nephew inherit.” A Thousand Years Ago.—One of the wonders of the world is demonstrated in the fact that about a thousand years ago a colony of Icelanders was planted on the western coast of Greenland. They were hardy people, inured to cold and meagre living, and there seemed to be no leason why they should not take root in the frozen soil of thair new home. They built a stone church there, and stone houses to live in, of which the ruins are still to be seen. But what became of the builders is a problem that has never been solved, and never will be. They vanished from the face of the earth, and that is all that is known. Whether cold, or pestilence, or starvation took them off, or whether wandering savages killed them, no man can tell. “ Lost Greenland is the name by- which this settlement is known in history, which can solve this mystery no more than it can tell the ultimate fate of those hapless women banished to Florida by the English Government years agone.