QUIPS AND CRANKS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 758, 10 September 1886, Page 6

QUIPS AND CRANKS.

A MISTAKE.

‘ What a murderous-looking villain the prisoner is,’ whispered the old lady to her husband in the court room. ‘ I’d be afraid to get near him.’

‘ ’Sh !’ warned her husband. * That isn’t the prisoner, he hasn’t been brought In yet.’ / *lt isn’t ?—who is it, then V ‘ It’s the Judge.’—Savannah News. AN OPTIMIST. Gilhooly—-‘ Why don’t you propose to Miss Longcoflßn. Ste is dead gone on you, and she i 3 rich besides.’ Gus de Smith— ‘ I would encourage her a little if it wasn’t that she is lame in one leg.’ ‘ For heaven’s sake, man, don’t be a pessimist. Don’t look at ir that way.’ ‘ Don’t look at what ?’ ' The situation, of course. Don’t say she is lame in one leg, but that she ha 3 one leg she is not lame in. Look on the bright side of things. Be an optimist.’—Texas Siftings. THE GRADUATE. He could quote from musty pages, delve in geologic ages, and relax himself on synthesis and such ; Could construct an exegesis, startle with a subtle thesis, and involve a tortured subject overmuch. He was great in mathematics as applied to hydrostatics or eternal revolution of the spheres ; His chronology was reckoned from the minimum of second to the undiscovered maximum of years. He was constantly amazing with philology and phrasing, with vocabulistic plenitude and ease; He was by his fellows quoted, as a lexicon was noted, his attainments were superlative degrees. On commencement his oration was received with an ovation; oh, his temporary glory was immense; While the complimenting flowers fell around in fragrant shower 3, and the fever of the moment was intense. But behold the fellow later from his sheltering Alma Mater reach his educated fingers for some necessary cash ; All the wisdom he may utter doesn’t turn to bread and butter ; and his theses do not count for daily hash.

A Boston man saw a good-looking woman drop her glove from a car window just as the train was moving from the station. He rushed forward, grabbed the glove, as he supposed, and racing alongside of the car, handed the fair one a banana skin, which he had picked up by mistake. It would appear that the first boycotter was the * beast ’ of the Book of the Revelation. In the 13th chapter and the 17th verse of that book this passage occurs : *He (the beast) causeth * * * that no man might buy or sell save he that that had the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.’

Here is the way a self-reliant woman beads off in an English newspaper, her husband, who apparently had been ’posting’ her:— ‘ Notice.—l, Mary Sanders, never contracted any debts in the name of William Sanders, as the name of Sanders is not good enough to get credit on. (Signed), Mary Sanders. ’