FUN AND FANCY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2390, 21 December 1899, Page 52

FUN AND FANCY.

— As soon as a man saves up a few pounds he begins to romance about his ancestors. — "Why is a policeman like a rainbow? Because he rarely appears until the storm is over.

— Some women take a man for better or •worse, and some take him for what he's worth.

— A paper annotinces that it will publish original poetry on the same terms as advertisements.

— You may mend a. broken reputation, but your neighbours will keep their eyes on the crack.

— One of the hardest things in all public affairs is to keep the brass band from mistakiiag itself for the entire procession. — A little boy having lost his balloon, his eister said: "Never mind,;- Neddy, when you die and go to heaven, you'll dit it."

— A man refused to take an emetic, saying that 'it was of no use, as he had tried one, and it wouldn't stay on his stomach.

— Sue: "Doesn't a man's second love usually differ from his first, Charlie?" He: ""Yes; she generally has more money."

— When two young persons think they are one, they act, in nine instances out of ten, as if they thought they were everybody.

— Revenged. Tom : "So that rich heiress refused you?" Jack: "Yes, but 1 got even with her. I married her mother."

— Sheridan threatened to cut his son off with a shilling. "You don't happen to have that shilling about you?" said the hopeful. — A sign over a, negro cabin in Liberty County, Georgia, reads : "I Teaches Folks to 'Reed and Rite an' do figgers in their heads." ' — The Shoemaker : "This boot doesn't fit. Try a bigger one." She (severely) : "No, sir; bring me one the same faize a little larger." — There is nothing a woman likes better than to get her husband to work on a job in the house, and then criticise him when he is at it.

• — "Don't trouble yourself to stretch your mouth any wider," said a dentist to his patient. "I intend to stand outside to draw your tooth."

— A child assigned as a reason for asking every day for our daily bread, instead of bread for every" week, that it was to have it always fresh.

— Purchaser : "K-a-t-1 is no way to spell cat-tie." Drover (writing receipt) : "Nacbody could spell with this pen ; some drunken fellows have used it."

;—; — Every baby is the sweetest baby in the world. You were onco considered the sweetest tbiug in the world, although you may not look it now.

—"I hear you called on the lady's father last night. How did he like your suit?" "Very much, I think. He kept half the coat collar when I left."

—It is reported that a Liverpool merchant was cured of rheumatism by being struck by lightning; but no mention is made of when and whore the funeral was held.

.—. — "I meant to have told you of that hole," laid an Irishman to a friend, who had fallen into a pit in the Irishman's garden. "No matter," said Pat, "I've found it."'

— A squire, worsted by Sydney Smith in irgumeiu, said, "If I hud a son who was an idiot, I'd make him a parson." Smith said, "Your father was of a different mind."

— A man is tsure to be interesting when he talks on a subject he knows all about, and imusing when he talks of what he is ignorant. It is the middle ground that is debatable.

— "Some people," says the office philosopher, "seem to think that the only \isc for H 'knowledge of grammar is to enable them to ferret out mistakes in other people's conversation."

— Suggested. — Perm : " Can you suggest any way in which I might improve my new novel?" Brushe : "You might put the last chapter first." Perm : "But all the chavacJerts die in the last chapter." Brushe: "Yev, I know."

—Mr Moveoft : "Well, my .lear, how do you find the neighbours here — sociable?" Mrs Moveoft: "Very. Three or four of them have sent in to ask if I would allow their children the use of our piano to practise on."

— Perhaps the most trying experience in the career of a maiden who has passed the first blush of romantic girlhood is when she braces herself to meet the shock of a proposal of marriage from some man, and the shock doesn't come.

— A wealthy gentleman, who owns a country seat, on one occasion nearly lost his wife, tvno fell into a river which flows through his estate. Ho announced Ehe narrow escape to his friends, expecting their congratulations. One of them — an old bachelor — wrote as follows:—"I always told you that river wa* too shallow*"

— Greene : "You don't mean to say you tell your wife everything you do?" Gray: "Hardly that. Bui I tell her a great many things I don't do." — "I shall never speak to him again," she said. "Why not?" "Well, we were alone in the drawing room last night when the ga« suddenly went out." "And what did he do?" "Nothing."