ON DIT.

Poverty Bay Independent, Volume I, Issue 16, 20 June 1885, Page 2

ON DIT.

Advice to moral men—Don’t lend a Maori lady your pipe, as it conveys a very peculiar inference. The following pertinent letter has been received by a gentleman in this town from a friend :—“ You ask me whether I know anything of Mr Thomson, late engineer to the Taranaki Harbor. Well, I do not know him except by reputation; and I fancy he is about as good a man as you would find anywhere. Of course, in Taranaki every man thinks himself a born engineer, therefore a competent man has no show with them at all. But one thing is certain, from all I have heard he is worth two of Goodall, the Napier man. . , I fear you will have trouble with your country members of the Board. There is a fine field for reflection and enquiry in the fact that familiarity with cattle and sheep having the effect of reducing the majority of men to an intellectual level with those animals. Why is this thusly ? They call it being Conservative, I call it being (adj.) fools. Anyhow it is a distinction without a difference. It seems to impel them to look with bovine horror upon any scheme which might tend to elevate the human race. Gisborne has many such, andby pretending that they are actuated by prudence they always attract the support of the timid, who form the larger half of the people.”

A lapsus linguae —“ Gentlemen of the jury,” said a prominent member of the Devils’ own, when adressing the twelve brave and true man who were to judge between our Sovereign Lady and the prisoner at the bat, who was charged with an unmentionable offence at the Supreme Court, “ I need not go further into the details of this, case, as it is, no doubt, one with which you are all well acquainted 1” Some amusement was caused in the Supreme Court on Wednesday by an excited council, after making a most able speech, sitting down and, grasping a pen, plunging it desperately into the water bottle in mistake for the ink. After vainly trying to write with it, he threw the pen from him in disgust, i We hear that although Mrs. Baldwin ’ created some surprise by reading questions which had been written upon slips of paper and then folded up —the majority of which ware.of the usual foolish nature— yet she failed to answer a very pertinent one put byMr. Woon as to whezhet we should ever “ strike oil.” We advfee Mr. Woon to apply “at the works from which the usual telegrams relating to the depth of “ the bore,” and the “ favorable indications” are sent, or else to interview the usual “ traveler from the coast.” it the scrip or the /"ioo damages that was of most importance in the case of Rees v. Toheniea and another? On the. .completion of the case* the natives threw up tfe, scrip as useless £hd worthless paper. If any example were needed in favor of Darwin’s theory of evolution it would have been found in the connecting link (at the Political Association meeting on Tuesday) whose prone position and peculiar deportmdftZon all such occasions., amply the