Quips and Cranks.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 423, 20 March 1880, Page 4

Quips and Cranks.

Irish Reading.—" Riotousness exalteth a nation." — Punch . "Mike, come in and take a drink." He rolled his eyes upward, then brought them down, and replied, " Darlint, I thought twoz an angel spakin' to me." It was a delicate piece of sarcasm in the boarder who sent his landlady a razor, neatly inclosed in a handsome silk-lined case and labelled "Butter-knife."

"How nicely this corn pops," said a young man who was sitting with his sweetheart before the fire. "Yes," she responded, demurely, "it's got over being green." A Washington girl tells her unprotected sisters that the best way to put to confusion a man who stares at them in the street cars is to steadily look at his feet. It is reported that the first silver dollar coined in the United States has been found. It is held by 28 different citizens. An Enlarged Definition. —Patriotism (according to Johnson) —Bove of one's country ; (according to Jingo)—Love of other people's countries

Chicago has decided to close up its music saloons at 10.30 o'clock. The idea is that after that hour everybody is either too drunk or too sleepy to care for music. A Friendly Hint. —Willum : " Not quite so active as you wus twenty years ago, Tummas." Tummas : "No, I baint, Willum; I find I carnt run up a score lately, but if onybody askes me to 'ave a drink, I jumps at the hoffer." A young lady in Chicago, when asked by an officiating minister, " Will you love, honor and obey this man your husband, and be to him a true wife?" said plainly, "Yes, if he does what he promised me financially." An old rail-splitter in Indiana put the quietus upon a young man who chaffed him upon his bald head in these words : " Young man, when my head gets as soft as yours, I can raise hair to sell."

In a letter apologising for inability to attend a public banquet recently, Mark Twain says : " Meantime you will kindly see that the portion of your banquet which I should be allowed to consume if I were present, is equitably distributed among the public charities of our several States and territories. I would not that any partiality be shown on account of political creed or geographical position, but would beg that all the crates be of the same size."

There are many smart paragraphs and brisk jokes, but the piece that has tickled our fancy more than any other is a delicious little parody on " The Bridge," in which the singer relates how he stood at midnight on several bridges and saw two moons rise, and three police pace along their beat with measured tread. We venture to give the last two verses of this poem: —

And now when I cross that river I always go at a run, For I think of those three policemen, Who resolved themselves into one. And whenever two moons are shining, I think of that fatal night, When that low and vulgar policeman Informed me that I was tight. A Missionary orator stood on a Sydney platform. Before him was a large audience, which included many daintily mannered ladies. He had to describe the "customs" of certain savages, and, of course, everybody wanted to know how . the darkies dressed. And this is how he put it. They had, he said, only a single article of attire, and that was a fig-leaf, which was still on its native tree a quarter of a mile off. Having thus adroitly disposed of Ms difficulty, he passed on to more congenial topics, and the blushes disappeared from the faces in the pews Old Jack Hayes, a bushman of the primitive type, may not be an astounding philologist; but it is clear from the following that, so far as innovation is concerned, he is daring and ingenious. Recently, his wife was attacked by a well-known and dangerous disease ; and Jack, in his anxiety, requested his mate Harry to run off for the doctor. "Tell him," said Jack, "That my Betty be down with harry-surplis." " But how am I"to remember that hard word ?" asked Harry, " Why," responded Jack, " jist yer think of yer own name, and then of that rig our parson be wearing when he be apreaching; dovetail the two on 'em together, and yer will have it —harry-surplis ! " Ninoompoopiana.—(Surfeited with excess of " cultchah," Prigsby and his friends are now going in for extreme simplicity.) Prigsby: "I considah the words of ' Little Bopeep'freshah, loveliah, and more subtile than anything Shelley evah wrote !" Muffington : Quite so. _ And Schubert nevah composed anything quite so precious as the tune." (Tries to hum it.) Chorus : " How supreme !"

A Popular Captain of an intercolonial steamer during a short stay in Melbourne was taken by his friends to see the lions in one of our colonial capitals. Among other_ places he was ushered into the presence of a legislative body, who were engaged in discussing the merits of a Bill for the suppression of thistles. After he had exhausted his curiosity, and had left the imposing chamber, he was asked what he thought of the conscript fathers ; to which he replied that they reminded him of a bad lot of steerage passengers HOT AND COLD. Among the railway travellers eating dinner in an hotel in Baltimore, the other day, was a fellow from Payette, Ohio, who swallowed meat, potatoes, and bread as if he had been a week without eating. A second cup of coffee was brought to him, and in his hurry he picked it up and took a large swallow. It was considerably hotter than pepper, and in his excitement he opened his mouth and shot the liquid across the table against a young man's shirt bosom, '' Gosh whoop hot beg pardon and blazes ! " he exclaimed, reaching after water. " You are a hog, sir ! " replied the young man, " a regular hog ! " "I am, eh!" "Yes, sir." "And I've got bristles ? " "Yes, you have," "And I grunt?"

"Yes." " Stranger," said the Ohio man, as he reached across after another slapjack, "stranger, I'm not a hog —I'm only a politician, bound for Washington."