FUN AND FANCY.

Otago Witness, Issue 1672, 8 December 1883, Page 28

FUN AND FANCY.

— " I tell you," said Poots, " there's an indescribable sense of iuxury in lying in bed and ringing one's bell for his valet." " You got a valet?" exclaimed Poots' friend. "No," replied Poots, " but I've got a bell." — Cincinnati Saturday Night. — " Walk slower, papa," cried the little girl whose short steps were no match for the strides of her masculine progenitor. " Can't you go nice and slow like a policeman ?" — Lowell Citizen.

— "Will you have it rare or well-done?" said the carver to an Irishman, as he was cutting a slice of roast beef. " I take it well-done ever since I came to this country," replied Pat ; "for it was rare enough I ate it in ould Ireland."

— " Yes," said Amy, " I went to the tele, phone and put the thingumbob to my ear—" "Thingumbob!" screamed the High School girl, " you mean the audituent tube," and then a solemn silence gathered around the neighbourhood. — A Heroic Resolve. — Rector's wife: "Another actress to be married to a lord ! It's simply shocking. I'm afraid there's no help for it, Septimus ; we shall have to bring up Evangeline for the stage !" — Funny Folks. — A teacher had just been telling the story of David to her class, and ended by saying, " And all this happened over three thousand years ago." A little urchin who had heard this, opening her eyes wide with wonder, exclaimed, " O teacher, what a memory you have got !" —An Irishman recently stopped at a hotel where pretty high bills were charged. In the morning the landlord made out the amount of damages and presented it to Pat. After he had glanced it over, the latter looked the landlord in the face and exclaimed ; " You put me in mind of a snipe !" " Why ?" asked the landlord. '' Because ye're pretty nigh all bill." — " Never say ' Mrs So-and-So's young ones,' " said a Philadelphia lady to her young hopeful ; " rats have young ones, people have 'children.'" "That may be all right about Mrs So-and-So," answered the boy : " I don't know her ; but Mrs Smith has young ones, for I heard her call one of them a ' little rat.' " — " You have a wide view from these mountains," said an Englishman to a shepherd in some remote district in the heights of Aberdeen. " That's true," said the shepherd. "You can see," said the travellers (there were two), " America from here." " Muckle farrer than that," he replied. "An' how can that be?" " When the mist drives off, ye can see the mune."

—A very good hit was recently made at an election in Scotland by one of the defeated candidates. A gentleman approached him with, " Well, Mr , how do you feel ?" " Well," said he, " I feel, I suppose, pretty much as Lazarus did?" "As Lazarus did?" said the first speaker ; "How is that?" "Why," said he, " Lazarus was licked by the dogs, aud so was I."

—Napoleon's hat once fell off at a review, when a young lieutenant stepped forward and picked it up, and returned it to him. " Thank you, Captain," said the Emperor. "In what regiment, Sire? 1 ' asked the lieutenant, as quickly as possible. Napoleon smiled and passed on, and forthwith had the lucky youth promoted. — A minister of the name of Sparks, whose pastorate lay in the north, was the father of thirteen children. At tho baptism of the thirteenth, an aged brother divine, desirous to choose what eeemed to him an appropriate description of the life of man, called on the congregation to join in singing the fifth paraphrase, begining with the line, "As sparks in close succession rise." So unconscious was he, that he could not understand the people's titter, until, when he descended from the pulpit, his pun was explained to him. — "No," said the poet, "my poem wasn't of a success. The critics rather sat down on it. But in view of the fact that the printer got the words 'golden light' 'guttersnipe,' I don't quite feel that the piece had a fair chance." — Boston Post. — Ethel — " I can't see what Maud can see in that ungainly, awkward Captain Heavitree." Madge— "My dear, it's becoming perfectly absurd. Only think ! The gardener told the cook yesterday that he hoped the Captain would stay for another fortnight, for positively there was no necessity to roll the gravel walks while they kept perpetually promenading up fttfd down I"— Loadota Funay Folks,