Sentiment and Humour.

Otago Witness, Issue 1242, 18 September 1875, Page 19

Sentiment and Humour.

A mew-sing — a cat concert. Man over-bored — an editor. Eve was the first bone-a-part. Cold snap — breaking an icicle. A tail of misery — the cocktail. A notbd personage — the banker. A water-spout— a teetotal speech. Disciples of Knox — prize-fighters. A good side-show — a pretty cheek. Boarding house — carpenter's sh »p. Divers amusements — pearl fishing. A bad policy — one that has expired. A hungry man needs no bill of fare. The best frontispiece — an honest face. Where to go when short of money — Go to work. The prodigal robs Jus heir, the miser robs himself. Female Suffrage — A No. 16 corset on a No. 20 woman. When you bury animosity, never mind putting up a tombstone. Man's great enemy is the wine-glas3 ; woman's, the looking-glass. The man' who hasn't got any habits hasn't got anything that he can call Ms own. Minds of ordinary calibre ordinarily condemn everything which is beyond their range. I>o not use evasions when called upon to do a, good thing, nor excuses when you are reproached for doing a bad one. " Sally," said a lover to his intended, "give me a kiss— will you Sally ?" "No, I shan't," said Sally ; '-help yourself." The habit of always being employed is a great safeguard through life, aa well as essential to the culture of every virtue. "Hallo Jake, where diet you buy those fish*" " I didn't buy 'em." "Well, where did you get them '* " " I hooked 'em ! " The best way I know of to lighten our burdens is to look around and tiud some one who has a bigger load than we have, and then pity him. Fiction is a narrow strip of very productive land, Jyiug between the dominions of trufch and falsehood, owing allegiance to neither. A little girl on the train was asked what motive was taking her to the city. "I believe they call it the locomotive," said the little innocent. Why is a clock the most modest of created things? Because it invariably keeps it hands before its face, and t quail y invariably runs down its own works. li' you wish, to know who is the most degraded and wretched of human beings, look for the man who has practised a vice so loug that he curses it while he clings to it. When a bank suspends in Kansas, they take tlxe manager to a neighbouring tree and serve him in the same manner. "A simple remedy, and we believe in its efficacy," says a journal. A lady teacher in one of the Janesville public schools has laid aside the ferule, and adopted the method of kissing her pupils into obedience. The largest'boys are particularly unruly, and require daily correction. A man went home and found his house locked up. Getting in at the window ■with donsiderable difficulty,- he found on the table a note from his wife ; " I have gone out. You will find the door key on One side of the door step." The common fluency of speech in many men and most women is owing to a scarcity of matter, and a scarcity of words ; f.,r whoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt in speaking to hesitate upon the choice of both.— Swift. The Finest View.— On his return home from a tour down the Rhine last autumn our practical friend, Jones, was asked what he thought of the views, when he answered, " Well, of all the views I clapped my eyes on, the finest, to my taste, was the Vieux Cognac." At one of our schools recently, in answer to the qiuwUon, "What's the dfttonoe fytwm »n uUni and * umtiwnt, *n$

upon which do we- live? "a bright little shaver replied : " The difference, is, that a continent 18 much larger than an island, and we live on bread and meat and other things." If life be a battle, how mad must he be who fails to arm himself for the contest ! If life be a storm, how infatuated is he who sl-eps while his barque is being driven among unknown waters I If life be a pilgrimage, how anwise is • he who strays from the right road, nor seeks to returnuntil the twilight shadows gather round his path ! A Strong but Delicate Hist-, —When a visitor outstayed his welcome at the . house of a hospitable country rector, and had become a permanent nuisance,' the host m the morning; prayed for a blessinoto descend upon "our visiting brother who will this day depart from us." Not - being a rhinoceros, the guest took the hint and departed. Longfellow says: "The little 1 have sftenof the world, teaches me tolookupoa the errors of others in sorrow,- nob in anger. When I take the history of one • poor heart that has sinned and suffered, and represent to myself the struggles and temptations it has pa?sed through^ the brief pulsations of joy, the feverish inquietude of hope and fear, . the prcssi re of want, the desertion of friends, I wouid fain leave the erring soul of fellov - nan with Him from whoso hand it came." A family, the widowed father of which has been somewhat afflicted with an intermeddling of uproarious sisters-in-law, has a six-year old girl that has a " faculty of prayer." A few evening 3 since she . enumerated the objects of her- supplications as follows: "God bless papa and my governess, and my sisters and brother/ and my uncle Sam and my aunt Georgia, ,» and my twin cousins, and cousin Julia,and all my relations, except Manr and' Jane and Ellen (the obnoxious aunts), and the less you have to do with them the' better it will be for you." An ancient darkey leaned over' a Clay-st. gate yesterday, and called to the dusky proprietor of a cabin : "See heah, Henry, isn't you 'bout ready tv pay me dat two bits?" "Haven't nuffin to pay wid," was the reply. "You borrowed dat money a whole year ago, Henry ! " continued the old man. " Uan't help dat • cant pay 4 " ' ' Henry, I believes you: don't', want to pay ; I believes you is- dishonest j andlnebber ask for.de money again ; t'U leave do Lord to collect it ! V •" Shoo ! " exclaimed Henry, greatly interested all at once, "jou hasn't enny more money to lend on dose terms, has ye ?" Musio and Mutton.— At St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, there was an old vicarchoral, who loved his dinner "not wisely, but too well." He had bouaht a fine quarter of mutton, and intended to have it for his Sunday's repast, after tho fatigue of chanting the morning service, but forgot to tell his w fe in what manner he wanted it cooked. The good lady, how ever, was equal to the emergency. Jn the twiddle of the '-Te Deum" a small boy was observed to creep up the aisle till he catna near the choir where his father was singing, and piping treble mingled with the chorus, tlms :— " My Mother's got a quarter of mutton and she don't know what to do-00-no wi' it.' The father responds : " Let her ooil the les; and roaafc the loin, and make a dumpling of the su u-u-et. Omne.s. — Amen. Beauty. —There is something in beauty, whether it dwells in the human face, in the penciled Jeaves of flowers, the sparklink surface of a fountain, or that aspect which genius breathes over its statue, that makes us mourn itR ruin. 1 should not" envy that man Ins feeiinas who could see a leaf wither or a flower fall without some sentiment of regret. This ttnder interest in the beauty and frailty of things around us, is only a slight tribute of becoming grief and affection ; for nature in our adversities never deserts us. She' even comes more nearly to us ill our sorrows, and, leading tig away frdm the paths of disappointment alld pain into her" soothing recedes, allays the anguish ot our bleeding hearts, bin^s up the w.jurtds - that have been inflicted, whispers the meek pltdgea of a better hopes and, in harmony with a spirit of still holier birth, points tv that home where decay arid death ' can never come. IiAKD on Pimpkins.— A contempofafy publishes the following : — Pimpkins 1 Don't you know Pimpkins'? Then you' don't know the daintiest, darlingest, most fashionable, and most fastidious youn" self-admirer that ever lisped " and languished in a drawing-room. Pimpkins was at Mrs. Bonnycastle's party last spring. One of the company was a bloomiug damsel from the country— a fresh rosy-cheeked, bright faced girl, overwhom the impressionable bachelors were in esstacijs. Pimpkins saw and admired;' Pimpkins determined to make an ? impression. He stared as her through his quizzing glass until he had stared her ortfe of ooantenahce. Then he approached her. She was engaged in knitting a tfair of over socks for one of Mrs. Bonnycastie'a children. " A<> said Pimpktna. <• Knitting, non hojiah I Tirooly industwiou* How, do you know, 1 like to see a yotm? lady mdustwuma. Ift a good »W 1 like to encouwage industry. Aw— what) that I ' « Soda «r stocking., do you want, exactly understand-but, aw-Iwanfc'em to come up over the calf,- you know," In that owe," replied the blooming darnel smiling a SWt > et innocent I should have to estimate, I never k, 3 a pair to cover one's whole body!" Biinn km* wa» observed at the sideboard shoX