Odds and Ends.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 312, 13 April 1878, Page 3

Odds and Ends.

A ooojd way to find a girl out is when she is'nt in. In these days of trickery, even a telegraph cable cannot be laid without a great deal of wire pulling. “Every cloud lias a silver lining,” and many a man wishes his pocket-book was a good-sized healthy cloud. Some genius proposes to introduce paper shirts. But a shirt made out of a story-paper would have too many tales. It is better that a woman should keep her stockings in repair than that she should know the origin of the rainbow. From the Boston Commercial Bulletin’s answers to correspondents ; —“ Son-in-law —Arsenic is the most certain. Put a little in her tea.”

An Irishman being asked for his certificate of marriage, .■'bowed a big scar on his head about the shape of a shovel, which was satisfactory. An Knotting Rack. —A man ran his head against a stone wall'last week. The result of the race was that the stone wall was beaten by a head ! A faemep. is opposed to railroads. He says that when he goes to town they “ bring him home so quick he hasn’t time to get sober before he arrives." If you go on an excursion, and the seats are all taken, stand up as long as yon can, and then cry out, “ Man overboard !” Every woman will rush for the rail.

A maeried woman ran away with the proprietor of a menagerie the other day, and the bereaved husband tauntingly remarks that he doesn’t know of anyone else in the world better qualified to manage her. In a country church in the south of Scotland a gravestone bears the following inscription : Here lies Johnny Denham ; If you saw him now you wadna ken him. The New York Sun decides that the husband ought to get up in the morning and make the fire, and if the Sim is able to make the husband do it there will be a revolution for society. Nobody will have any breakfast much before noon. Du. John Lindley states, in his work entitled the “Vegetable Kingdom,” “ The gates of Constantinople, famous for having stood from the time of Constantine to that of Pope Eugene. IV, a period of 1100 years, were made ol cypress pine.” When he was a young man, he rushed into a burning building and gallantly dragged her out by the hair of the head. They were married the next winter, and now she rushes in and drags him out by the hair of his head whenever she feels like it. Such is true love. It is said to be a musical fact that every orchestra contains at least two musicians with moustaches, one in spectacles, three with bald heads, and one very modest man in a white cravat, who, from force of circumstances, it may be observed, plays on a brass instrument. That was a happy point made the other night at a civic feast by a naturalised German. In responding toa toast lie said, “ I am the best Englishman, perhaps of any of you, because you were all born English and could not help it, whereas I became an Englishman from choice, Dress Patterns. —The death of a fashion correspondent is reported from Grand Rapids, Mich. .She tackled a stray copy of Euclid, under the impression that it was a sewing machine company's book of dress patterns. She struck proposition 5 in spherical trigonometry, gazed on it once, and said : “ I know what a fichu basting on a purple polonaise is, and I have met with barege cretonnes cut bias ; but when it comes to making dresses for hump-backed women and trimming them with isoceles and perpendiculars at right angles to the plane A EG, then, indeed, I feel I am not fitted to solve life’s terrible mystery.

A New York girl sang “ Darling T am growing old,” with an expression so pertinent and truthful that her procrastinating lover left her for good. It is suggested that one reason why so many marriages turn out unhappily is because the bridegroom is never the “ best man” at tlic wedding. “ There are people who live behind the hill” is an old German proverb, which means that there are other folk in the world besides yourself, although you may not see them

.Says Josh Billings :—“ There ain’t but phew khan stick a white handkerchief into the brest pocket ov their overcoat wiiliout letting a little bit ov it stick out —just bj' acksident.” A newspaper editor says :—“ We have received a notice of marriage for insertion, to which -was appended the original announcement, “ Sweethearts at a distance will please accept this intimation.’ ” An hotel-keeper in Kentucky advertises that he boards newly married couples at half-prices. He seems to have found out that such people mostly live on love, and do not cost much to keep.— Examiner.

An old bachelor having boon laughed at by a party of pretty girls, told them, “You arc ‘ small potatoes.' ” “ We may be small potatoes,” said one of them, “ but we are sweet ones.”

In speaking of a clerical friend who possesses a vei'y rubicund countenance, seme one said, the other day, “I don’t think he drinks ; In fact I know ho does not, for he told me so : but lie probably sleeps in a bed with very red curtains.” There is a hint of unspoken pathos, a touch of patient suffering and resignation, in this birth notice from the Marysville Appeal : —“ In this city, Dth August, to the wife of Wm, Lea, a son—not twins tliis time.” You can sell you cat for ten dollars in the Black Hills. It will cost you eiglity-five dollars to get out there with the cat and get home again, but then you will be rid of the cat, and that is worth one hundred and twenty dollars to any man. Riding History Roughshod.—Auntie Aggie : “ And wliat was he celebrated for ?” Maud: “He was a great scholar, and abolished the Curfew.” Auntie Aggie: “What else?” Maud: “And he died of a surfeit of palfreys.” A General Resurrection. —A few days ago, at a colliery village in the north of England, while a number of miners were discussing the depression in the coal trade one of them excitedly exclaimed, “ Thor’s nowt gan to benefit wor country but a general resurrection !”

A lover of good coffee entered a grocery recently, and holding up a handful of ground coffee from a big can, he inquired, “ Are there any beans in this coffee V” “ No, sir,” promptly replied the grocer. “ How do you know ?” asked the man. “ Because I was out of beans, and had to put peas in,” was the answer. I heard rather a good repartee at lady H.’s ball the other day. A gentleman who has a reputation as a bore of the first order said to his partner, a very pretty girl by the way, after a severe gallop,_ “ How I wish I were your fan !” “So do I,” slie replied. “ You do ; why ?” exclaimed the bore. “ Because, then, you see, I could shut you up.”— Hornet. When Senator David Davis wakes up in the morning he calls out to his private secretary, “John, on which side did I vote yesterday ?” “Democratic,” says John. “Ah ! then this is the Rebublican’s day. John, put a cannon ball in eaeli coat-tail pocket !” A passenger train on an Irish railway a few days since ran over an intoxicated fellow on the track. He was s® insensible to the magnitude of his misfortune as to remark to the guard, as he looked at his own lacerated limb, “ Arrah, now, tliis is too bad —I didn’t mean to stop the train.” Some of the London police are very funny. A gentleman was at the cattle show when the people were thronging out. A burly policeman stood at the place of egress directing the throng and shouting at the top of his voice, “ This way out ! This way out ! No other entrance !” When chaffed at the “bull,” he answered good liumoredly, “ It’s the only entrance to the exit !” A Stable-keei-er who invariably cautions liis patrons against driving fast repeated this injunction to a gentleman who was hiring a team of him the other day, and received tlie following response :—“ I am going to a funeral and must keep up with the procession if it kills the horse.” He was permitted to drive on. An American minister treated his village congregation to one of Mr. Beecher's sermons, unware that the popular Brooklyn preacher made one of his hearers. Accosting hi in after service, Mr. Beecher said : “That was a fair discourse : how long did it take you to write it ?” “ Oh, I tossed it off one evening,” wiis the reply. “ Indeed !” said Mr. Beecher. “ Well it took me much longer than that to think out the frame-work of that sermon.” “ Are you Henry Ward Beecher?” asked the sermon-stealer. “ I am,” said that gentleman. “Well then,” said the other, not in the least disconcerted, “ all I have to say is that 1 ain’t ashamed to preach one of your sermons anywhere.”