BRIEF MENTION

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 348, 8 August 1885, Page 7

BRIEF MENTION

Women are not inventive as a rule. They have no eagerness for new wrinkles. If a hansom man is driving with a sulky girl, how will he pacify her ? With a bus' ! An old general well known on the New Zealand Railways— General Mismanagement. The Wellington Exhibition which was opened^on Saturday with a great flourish of trumpets is pronounced a failure. Avoid a drunken man; he may get you into a quarrel. Avoid the same man when he is sober ;, he may get you drunk. Some of our funny exchanges offer their readers files. A joke that can't be opened without a file is not worth opening. Mr Justice Bichniond's latest dictum is that governments, corporations, or companies who accept the 'lowest tender' deserve to suffer for such 'a wretched, rotten system.' Rationalist : ' Nay, nay, I'll no sell ye a paper on the Sawbath— for fear of the Christian police— but as ye are a decent-looking body I'll just gie ye one, and then ye can throw me back a saxpence in fun.' The distress in the South is increasing-, and people say things have not been so bad in Christchurch for 17 years. Hundreds of people are out of employment, and find it more and more difficult to keep the wolf from the door. The following singular advertisement appears in the 'wanted' column of the Napier Daily Telegraph :— i Wanted, insurance agents and attendant medical practitioners not to pick the oranges when calling at Te Apite on their rounds.' A certain newspaper proprietor, lately deceased, was once vigorously attacked for inserting objectionable advertisements in his paper. 'My dear fellow,' he replied to Ms tormentor, ' what can I do V I charge them double price ! ' Te Aroha is wild with excitement. Silver is known to exist in some of the reefs on the mountain, above the pretty little township, and it is hoped that the La Monte process may be introduced with the best results. The name of La Monte is as familiar injihe people's mouths as household words. r She party who tried to walk off with the ' Great" Lone Land ' at the Public Library the other day subsequently explained that he was under the impression that the Lending Department was in full swing. The misapprehension proved a serious one for him. Poor ' Jack Hebden,' editor of the Canterbury Times, has passed away in the prime of life and under very sad circumstances. He was injured in an omnibus accident the other day and sustained hurts that have just terminated fatally. He was very well-known in Christchurch, where he was respected by all. 'A writer in the Fielding Star suggests that a Bill shall be brought in at once, making it imperative that those who sell poisons shall defray the expenses of the funerals of all who die by such means, which he thinks will have the desired effect of their relinquishing the sale of such villainous cemponnds as 'Rough ou Rats.' The little heroine of ' Ouida's ' latest— a poem in dramatic form— is made to utter a pathetic protest against the 'cramming' system. ' Perhaps lam ill,' she says : — The cyphers jump about my bed all night, And when I shut my eyes I see the slate ! I try to learn ; I try with all my might ; I s'pose I'm stupid ; learning's such a weight, And, do 'em how I may, they won't come right. A new chum who hired a bedroom at a Hobson-streetboarding-house,the other night, asked the landlady on the following morning •what the pillows were stuffed with. < They are as hard as rocks,' said the new chum, as he fumbled for the shilling. ' The pillows are stuffed with goose feathers,' said the landlady « Oh, 1 see,' said the traveller— not separated from the bones '.' Then he flew. The Auckland cabby who drives No. 65 deserve? honourable mention. He found a valuable diamond ring in his cab the other night after driving a fare home from the Rita-EadclifF concert, and promptly restored the ring to its owner through Mr Radcliff's agent, the genial Jack Smith refusing to take a reward ! When we want a cab we look out for number Go. A good churchwarden of one of our city churches was wandering down the wharf very early on Sunday morning, when noticing some small boys fishing he commenced to reprove , them for breaking the Sabbath. In the middle of his lecture he suddenly stopped to ejaculate to one of the boys whose attention had been distracted from his line ' Look out youngster, you have got a bite ! ' Human nature was too strong for him. The Government proposed last session that railway tickets should be sold at post-offices like postage stamps, but, so far as we know, nothing further has been done in the matter. Why the public should be compelled to wait for their tickets until five minutes before the departure of a train, and then purchase them at the smallest and most inconvenient of pigeon-holes, is one of those things the human mind will never be able to grasp. *An Anxious Mother ' writes to a contemporary : — ' In the late discussion of the barmaid question, one member of the House said that '.they kept young men out of mischief.' Are we mothers, then, to understand I

that they are only nursemaids provided by generous publicans for those too old for the home nursery ? Surely we may claim a voice in the choice of nursemaids, and insist on the discontinuance of the bottle for our grown-up sons !' One of the unemployed at the meeting at the Temperance Hall the other night protested against Garrard's being allowed to address the meeting. 'He had been a stumbling block and a disgrace to them.' Is this the reward of years of devotion to the cause of the 'orney 'anded ? W. Cr. we weep for you. More tea leaves from the Flowery Land ! We wonder what percentage there is actnally of real tea in the so-called ' first crop of New Season's Teas ' in the hold of the Tamsui just arrived at Wellington from Foochow ? If the gentle public only knew how John Chinaman runs this' tea business they would take more kindly to the purer products of old John Bull from his own fine gardens in Northern India. Bismarck has been speaking in the Reichstag on the subject of Sunday Observance. He is reported to have said : — ' I must say that when I was in England I always had a painful and uncomfortable impression of the English Sunday ; and I was always glad when it was over. lam sure, too, that many Englishmen had the same feeling about it, for they sought to accelerate the inarch of time (on that day), without witnesses, in a manner which I would rather not characterise, and were overjoyed when Monday dawned. Whoever has lived in English society will understand what 1 mean.'