FUN AND FANCY.

Otago Witness, Issue 1752, 20 June 1885, Page 28

FUN AND FANCY.

— A word to the wise : Remain bo. — Matchless Women : Maiden aunts. —Silent watches of the night : Those not wound up.

—A restaurateur announces " eighteen carrot vegetable soup." — Sample of Cockney Wit : Why is a ghost up a tree like a man eating his dinner ? Because he's a goblin up the bash !

—There is only one thing sadder than death, and that is a seat in the theatre behind a fourBtorey hat. — " Mamma," said a little girl, " I think I've got ammonia." " You mustn't say ammonia, dear; you must say pneumonia." "But it ain't new, for I think L had it yesterday." — A lamb can distinguish its mother's cry among a hundred other sounds. It is the same with a boy, but he seldom pays the same attention to it that he doa3 when his father speaks.

— " Take Oap'n Smiff's fam'ly, f'rinstance," he Baid. ."Now, there's a nautical fam'ly if there ever was one. The Oap'n's a tar and his wife's a Tartar. Even their little children are tarable."

— I am surprised, John," said an old lady, when aha found the butler helping himself to the finest old port. "So am I, ma'am ; I thought y.on had gone out," was the reply. — " I wonder if she's worth my wait in cold ?" mused the youth who lingered outside the churoh wherein his girl worshipped, while the ten degrees-below zero air nipped his nose. — A Providence man slapped a stranger's face for staring at his wife in a street car, and he was beginning to feel himself a hero when the car stopped and a little girl helped the " impudent " fellow off. He was stone blind. —A French author has translated a passage from one of Cooper's novels as follows : "He descended from his horsa in fronfc of the chateau, and tied him to a larga grasshopper." The original reads, " a large locust; " (tree). —Professor— "Gentlemen will please close their books." After a lapse of a few sacouds, observing that bis polite command had not, been obeyed, ho added, tv Those who are not gentlemen will please close their books." — " My boy," said a father to his son, " treat everybody with politeness, even those who are rude to you. For remember that you show courtesy to others not because they are gentlemen, but because you are one." ' —Editorial Sauct'im.— Enter comio party: " England seems to be doing a Russian business just now." Then a deep silence fell upon the scene, and by degrees the editor began to realise that a pun had been perpetrated in his presence.

, — •' "A scientist Bays that the way to sleep is to think of nothing," reads Mrs Smith in a newspaper. "If that be true, I should say that you would sleep all the time, my dear," said her husband. "No doubt, Mr Smith, for I trunk a great deal of you." —"When I want my children to mind " said Popinjay, "I don't stop to explain the reason to em. I just put my foot down, and that's the end of it." " Oh, well," responded Mobaon, absent-mindedly, "that covers the ground of course ; there's ne need for explanation. —First dude : • Aw, Ohawley, my dear boy, whatawattlin' pace you aregom' this morning.' Second dude : " Aw, y as , Fitzuoodle, my dear fellow. Don't detwain me. I'm hard at work. This is the busiest season of the year to me." "By Jove, Chawley, what are you doin' ?" I'm dodgin' my creditors." —Professor (describing an ancient Greek theatre) : "And it had no roof." Junior (sure that he has caught the professor in a mistake) : "What did they do, sir, when it rained?" Professor (taking off his glasses and pausing angrily) : " They got wet, sir." —German, and not English, is the language of common conversation among tho British Royal Family. If the British taxpayer «' O ro to put his ear against a soM wall of Windsor he would be surprised to hear bis beloved Wales exclaim, just after having stepped on a tack, " Donnerwettcr .'"

—He Didn't Quite Catch Oa.— " Do you like Shakespeare ?" murmured Kati-iua, fresh from the seminary, as she threw a soft, languishing glance of her blue eyes into Hans Scbwoir/^r'a ruddy face. " Yaw, fraulein, I like Shake's peer or any oaer peer better don n9ver vos,"