QUIPS AND CRANKS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 777, 21 January 1887, Page 6

QUIPS AND CRANKS.

* I hope and pray,’ remarked a gentleman as he left the steamer, * that I shall never have occasion to cross the Atlantic again.’ * Rough passage, eh ?’ queried a friend. ‘ Rough is no name for it. I had four kings heat three times.’—N.Y. Sun. * Who is your favorite author ?’ asked the literary writer. Maggie quickly replied : «The author of my being, of course, dear papa.’ It is unnecessary to say that papa immediately came down with the cash for the new dress which Maggie had set her heart on.—N.Y. Independent. Two old friends met and referred to the days when they had been sweethearts. At last he said : ‘ Ay, Jennie, an’ I hae never loved anybody since you. I hae never forgotten you.’ ‘John,’ she said, with a little moistening of the eye, * you’re just as big a leear as ever—an’ I believe ye jist the same.’ Monsieur is a noted miser. His wife says to him : * My dear, is it not time to think of Jules’ education ?’ ‘ Yes; hut it costs too much.’ * Do you not know of a school that is cheap ?’ * Certainly.’ * Which one ?’ * The school of adversity.’ One day Beauregard, with several lesser lights, came upon a sentinel who had taken his gun entirely to pieces, and was greasing lock, stock, and barrel. The great general looked like a thundercloud, but neither his flashing uniform nor the scowl on his face had any effect on the sentinel, who quietly proceeded to rub a piece of his gun. * Say,’ remarked an officer, ‘ that’s Beauregard there. He’s a sort of a general. ’ * All right,’ said the unabashed sentinel, ‘ if he’ll wait till I get this gun together, I’ll give him a sort of a salute.’ The following anecdote is from the ‘ Reminiscences and Opinions ’ of Sir Francis Hastings Doyle. While Mr Grenville was ■talking to a friend belonging to a former epoch ... a serious distortion passed across the old man’s face. Mr Grenville was quite alarmed (this shows, I think, that the (difference in years between them was very

great), and fancied a fit of some kind must be coming on. ‘Oh, you need not be frightened,’ exclaimed the visitor, recovering himself, ‘I am all right. But you see when I first entered upon life, it was considered a gross act of ill-breeding to sneeze in company. You had to master the tendency somehow or other, and the result is that, for me and my contemporaries, sneezing has become a lost art. I only wish I could reacquire it now, but, alas, it is too late.’ An eating-house keeper advertised for * a boy to open oysters fifteen years old.’ When an oyster becomes such a veteran, its age should be kept a secret, the same as a spring chicken’s. An oyster ought to be able to open itself long before it reaches its fifteenth year.—Norristown Herald. A Deserving Tramp.—Woman : *lf I give you something to eat will you saw a little wood ?' Tramp : ‘No, mum ; I’m too weak to saw wood. I’m not lazy, jest weak, but I’m willin’ to do what I can. You give me a good dinner, an’ I'll sit out in the cornfield for a scarecrow while I’m eatin’ it.’