Varieties.

Otago Witness, Issue 654, 11 June 1864, Page 16

Varieties.

Question for Etymologists.— Do the "roots of words" produce "flowers of speech?" Why are book- keepers like chickens ? Because they have to scratch for a living. An absent man lately put his dog to bed, and kicked himself down stairs. He did not discover his mistake until the next morning. A writer in the " Dul.lin University Magazine," speaking of the poor of Ireland, says : " Many thousands of them were often destitute of the only food they possessed." A gentleman observing that he had fallen asleep during a sermon preached by the bishop, a wag remarked, " that it must Lave been Bishop the 'composer.'" An amateur naturalist offers a reward to the man who will furnish him with a live specimen of the " brick bat." A dandy accosted the carrier of Peckham asfollows :— " You take all sorts of trumpeiy in your cart, don't you ?" " Yes, jump in, jump in." We lately met a grammarian, says a California paper, who has just mode a tour through the mines, conjugating, or rather cogitating, thus :— ''Positive mine; comparative, miner; superlative, minus!" A subscriber writes to a Western editor :— " I don't want your paper any longer." To which the editor replies •' I wouldn't make it any longer if you did. Its present length suite me very well." An Optical Illusion.— A chandler having had ' some candles stolen, a person bid him be of good cheer, " for in a short time," said he, " I am confident they will all come to light." Two countrymen seeing a naturalist in a field collecting insects, one of them asked the other, " Vot's that ere gemman 1" " Vy, he's a naturalist." "Vot'sthat?" "Vy, yon who catchesgnats, to be sure." A judee, being present at the representation of " Pizarro," fell asleep in the^midst of " Rolla's" speech to his troops. Mortifying as this must have been, Sheridan said, .with his usual good humor, " Let him sleep : he thinks he is on the bench." A new system of swindling is recorded. A well-dressed man inspects " To Let^ apartments, asks the mistress of the house to write her address on a card for him, and then uses the card to borrow money from the lady's tradespeople. " You have not a drop of the great Napoleon's blood in your veins," said testy old Jerome one day in a pet to his nephew the Emperor. " Well," replied Louis Napoleon, " at all events I have hi* whole family on my shoulders." The late Charles Wynne, M.P., known in the House of Commons. "Squeak," had a feeble,*" piping voice. Happening, fop some reason, to be put in the same room with a blind old gentleman, whom he did not know, he made the remark tohim, " Very fine weather, ar." " Very fine indeed, ma'am," rejoined the other. The late American Judge Peters has left behind him some good puns, among which is the following :— -When on the district court bench, he observed to Judge Washington that one of the witnesses had a vegetable head. " How so ?" w«* the. inquiry. "He has carrotty hair, reddish cheeks, a turn-up nose, and a sage look." Lord Astley, before he charged at the battle of Edgebill, made this short prayer : " O Lord thou knowest how busy I must be this day j if I forgot thee, do not thou forget me." " There were certainly," says Hume, " much longer prayers said hi the Parliamentary army; but! doubt if therowas as good a one." In spite of the ill-founded contempt which Dr Johnson professed to entertain for actors, he treated Mrs Siddonswith great, politeness; and when she called on him in Bolt Court, and ha servant could not immediately provide her with a chair, he said, " You see, madam, wherever yotfr go, there are no seats to be got." Toussaint L'Ouverture inherited from bis African ancestors a knowledge of the properties of many herbs. An Indian squaw has been, within the last few years, curing variola among the tribes of Canada, by means of & pitcher-plant, with a success which hss commanded the attention of the medical profession both in America and ia Europe. " I don't see," said Mrs Partington, aa Ike came home from Bchool, and threw his books on one chair, his jacket on another, and bis cap on the floor, saying that he didn't get the medal. " I don't see, dear, why you didn't get the medal, for certainly a more meddlesome ooy I never knew. But, no matter, when the anniversary e» k t and again, you will be sure to get ft."