Odds and Ends.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 361, 11 January 1879, Page 3

Odds and Ends.

Choioeful- On the wall of a railway station in Indiana is posted this notice :—“Loafing in , this room is strictly forbidden and must bo observed.” “ How nicely the corn pops,” said a young man who was sitting with his sweathart before the fire. “ Yes,” she responded, demurely, “it’s got over being green." A Sunday school boy of Marysville, Ivy., was asked by bi 3 superintendent if his father was a Christian. “Yes, sir,” he replied, “but he is not working at it much.” “Do not marry a widower,” said the old lady. “ A ready-made family is like a plate of cold potatoes. ” “ Oh, I’ll soon warm them over,” replied the damsel, and she did. A. Detroit lady compositor has succeeded in capturing a husband in the person of a Detroit editor. Detroit feminine compositors appear to have quite a reputation for “ setting caps.” A German, lately arrived, and having acquired but a few words and phrases of English, wants to say ' ‘ good-bye. ” He thinks he has Btruclc it, and, shaking his friend’s hand, says in apathetic tone : “ Veil, ole vellers, oaf yon don’t see me some more, lielloa !” A Worthy citizen of Auld Reekie, having visited London for the first time,was thus addressed by a friend on his return—“ Weel, John, what think ye o’ Lunnon, noo ? Isna yon a grand place ?” “A grand place !” echoed the disappointed tourist ; “ deed man, Sandy, it’s just like a thoos-and Coogates !” “ Why didn’t yon answer me before, you bad boy said an irate mother to her offspring. He wanted to finish the pile of nuts and raisins which he had recently abstracted from the sacred precincts of the pantry, and his mouth was too full for utterance for a while, but at length he drew his sleeve hastily a'Toss his lips, gave a gulp as big as the Gulf of Mexico, and came running from behind the woodpile crying, “ Mother, I would have come before, but I didn’t hear till you’d called three or four times.” Scepticism once in a while gets a home thrust. They were talking about the story of Balaam and the ass. It was denounced as a prima facie fraud by the profound thinker, the disciple of philosophy, the huge trained sceptic, who could believe anything provided it was not in the Bible, and who expected to finish the discussion by saying, “ I don’t exactly see how according to the natural law an ass could talk like a man.” Neither can I see bow according to natural law a man can talk like an ass.” We understand, says the Jlangiora. standard, that the Hon. Thomas Russell has netted a cool .£150,000 uDon one calm afternoon on the London Stock Exchange, when war between England and Russia was a question on the turn of a penny. This is better than three-car-log. How our lynx-eyed friend Sir Julius Vogel’s mouth must have watered when he heard the news ! Next to one’s mother-in-law’s early demise, we believe that the good fortune of a friend makes the greatest inroad into most men’s hearts. A. ragged, greasy, unkempt tramp went shuffling into a lawyer’s office one day and asked if Mr. , the jurist, was in, He wa3. Well, the pedestrian wanted a lift. He was dead broke, without a nickel, and was troubled with an aching void in his stomach. The legal light expressed some surprise as to why he came to him for help. “ Why, you see, Colonel,” said the pedestrian, “ I am a kind o’ related to you. I used to be acquainted with your divorced wife.” The request was based upon such unique grounds that the jurist bestowed upon his charity client a solid silver dollar. A Dear Old Dodge. —A sharp old hand, occupying an old waggon by the roadside, was discovered a short time since washing and scouring an old gin barrel On being ssked what he intended to do with it, he replied that he was fixing up to go into the retail liquor business, and, to avoid the law, was going to make use of this tube instead of glasses, thereby making it apparent beyond dispute that he was selling liquor “by the barrel.” The fellow' is doing a thriving business. A great many persons have been “ shot in the neck” by this novel contrivance. Hatched !—At a recent discussion held by negroes, the question of the evening was, “ Which am de mudder of de chicken —de hen wot lay de egg, or de hen wot hatches de chick ?” The question was warmly debated, and many reasons pro and con. were urged and combated, when a shrewd fellow put the case thus ? “S’pose dat you set one dozen duck eggs under alien, and dey hatch, which am de mudder—de duck or de hen v ” This was a poser, but the chairman found a way out of the difficulty. Rising from his chair in all the pride of conscious superiority, he announced—- “ Ducks am not before de house; chickens am de question - derefore I rule ducks out and so he did to the complete overthrow of those who held a different opinion.

How ’they do it in California.— Beecher, the most written up, written down, and written at man in the universe, may expect a lively time of it in this town of modest and diffident newspaper men. When Theodore Tilton was here, he got up one night at the Palace in great trepidation and violently rang for a waiter. The servant found the long-haired lecturer standing outside in his night gown. “I want assistance immediately. There is a man under my bed ! “Oh : that’s all right,” replied the man cheerfully ; “it’s only the Chronicle reporter.” And so it pro-rod. jioLiD Information. —A letter from a patient subscriber says; “ Give us some solid information in your Graphicalities.” This is precisely what we do. We mention facts in this column every day never before known. Here is some valuable information ?In Greece the different sorts of poetry were the epic, the cylic, the lyric, the elegiac, the trochaic, the idyllc, the dactyllic, the iambic, the hexameter, and pentameter, the catelectic trimeter, pseans, hyposchemas, parttnia, scolia, embatera, hernia, epimera, proodes. mesodes, and epodes. Some of these are very nice, and everybody should write that way as much as possible. For a cataleptic (or a catalectic, as it is called in the books probably from motives of delicacy), is a great luxury, and will sometimes fetch as much as twenty-five cents if you return the basket. An Extending Business. —“ Some time ago,” said the drummer, “ I had occasion to visit the city of D——, in the State of Delaware, and I concluded to stop at the Blue Hen Hotel, where 1 had spent one night during a previous visit. When I reached the spot where the hotel used to be, I was suprised to see 1 that the tall building had given place to a low structure with a single row of windows, and the roof close to the ground. However, I recognised the keeper of the old hotel sitting on a chair in front of one of the windows, and I asked where his establishment was.” “ There she is, sir. I’ve enlarged her since you were here last.” “ Indeed ! Enlarged ? I don’t exactly understand-” “ Oh, I know she looks smaller ; but, ; stranger, I tell you I’ve add- d four stories to the hotel since January, ’75.” “ What became of them ?” “ I’ll explain. After the hotel had been built a year or two she suddenly began to sink. I dunno what the reason is A quicksand under her, I reckon. Anyhow, she kept going down and down until the first story passed underground. Thon I moved the bar room upstairs, put another story on top, and began business again. Pretty soon she sank to another floor, and we moved up a second time and added another story. It’s been nothing unusual in this house to go to bed in the second story and wake up in the morning to find yourself in the cellar. The milkman has regular instructions to pour the milk down the chimney in case he comes some morning early and can’t dig out a window. Last month I over slept myself for forty-eight hours because the room remained dark, and when I did get up the roof was just even with the street. This part of the house that you see now I built on early last week. The property becan&e too valuable to lease. There are sixteen stories to'lie Blue Hen now, and I’ve got to add another before the week is out. If this hotel was spread out sideways, she’d be about three hundred yards long. Eventually I expect she’ll be six orseven hundred stories high, and it’ll take you a week to get into the cellar. I s'pose if I keep on, this hotel will reach clean through from Delaware to China. The lower end will come bursting out into Hong Kong or Shanghia, and maybe I’ll be taking Chinamen for •borders without knowing it. Then very likely they’ll tax both ends of the hotel and take money out of ray pocket. They’re always grinding a boor man so he can hardly get along. Costs like thunder, yon know, to run a hotel like this that requires so much to keep up a respectable appearance. I dunno exactly what I’ll do if she breaks out on the other side of the earth and then slips through the hole. I can’t carry on a hotel floating out into ethereal space, you know. I have some hopes that maybe, before she sinks more’n than a mile or two, she’ll stiike a volcanic vein, or something, and get a shove up ; come all the way out, for all I know, and stand on solid ground. If she does, you come round and see me, and I’ll take you up and show you the view. I’ll bet you can see Peru, and Oshkosh, and Nova Zembla, and Tnckerton, and all these places—regular bird’seye view ; you come round any way, and I’ll take you down into the cellar.” I said I would, then I hunted up a safer hotel. The Blue Ben is too original, too eccentric, for comfort.