Tit Bits and Teaddle

Observer, Volume XVI, Issue 948, 27 February 1897, Page 11

Tit Bits and Teaddle

Wellington possesses the champion mean burglars. They broke into a Chinaman's house the other night, and 'when John was woke up by the noise they made, they seized his only pair of trousers and decamped. Under the circumstances he could not follow up the chase. The tailoring business is on the boom at Coromandel. It seems that there is a gap in a barbed-wire fence which encloses a paddock that offers a short-cut to the township, and that the barbed-wire takes toll from the nether garments of every male pedestrian that comes along. Down South they are making fun at the expense of the Auckland Herald man, who, in writing up a recent excursion round the Great Barrier, wrote, ' The vessel skirted Rakino Island, where Mr Sanford catches the smoked schnapper.' One paper says : — ' It disillusionises our ideas that the fish were smoked after they were caught, when we are told they are caught out of the sea at Rakino ready made.'

• The prisoner beat his wife with great violence, your Worship,' said a constable, called as a witness at a fa out hern S.M. Court the other day. ' Wid great violins, is it?' said the accused, indignantly ; ' just listen to that now, your Warship; and I haven't got such a thing as a fiddle in the place !' There was a street row down South the other day. The bobbies found that the business on hand was rather too swift for them, but a clergyman proved equal to the emergency, and promptly dispersed the mob. He mounted a box and merely announced, ' A collection will now be taken up.' The crowd did not wait an instant longer. They fled. A Masterton cleryman is deploring the absence of family worship in the bush settlements. He says that the other day he was visiting a certain house in the country, when he knelt to have a few words of prayer. The children thought from his posture that he was desirous of a game of leapfrog, and accordingly they sprang over his head one after the other, in the most approved style. A Ponsonby mother was greatly scandalised the other day. at hearing the son and heir indulging in profane language in the back yard. ' Johnny,' she said, ' I'm quite shocked to hear you swear. If that is what you are learning at Mr Bailey's school I shall take you away at once.' Johnny (proudly) :-' Learn that at school! What are you givin' us? Why, it's me what teaches the other boys.'

Somebody Is advertising in lihe Starfor 'a lad to pluck pigeons,' Sorely sufficient pigeons nave been plucked to last the season. ' „ ' : . ' " : Tramcar Conductor (to bis wife).: '"Whose boy is that you brought into the car?' Wife: 'Why, that is one of ours.' Tramcar Conductor: 'Hum, I'll have to ask for a day or two off to get acquainted with my family.' Carterton, in the Wairarapa, had a sensation all to itself last Week.' A draught horse took charge of its cart and started out to break the local record. In less than five minutes it brought down 17 verandah posts, and left the best business thoroughfare piled up with ruins. I asked a girl who's up to date To tell me straight the name Of the greatest hero a kindly fate Had ever given to fame. She hesitated not at all, But answered loud and clear : ' I forget his name ; he played full back In our football team last year.' He was summoned the other day for service on a jury down South, and wanted to be excused. Asked for his reason, he said : ' I owe a man five pounds and I want to hunt him up and pay the money/ The judge was amazed. 'Do you really mean to inform this court you would hunt up a man to pay a bill instead of waiting for him to hunt you up ?' ' Yes, Your Hanner,' replied the juror with an untroubled countenance. 'Then you are excused,' remarked the judge ; ' I don't want any man on the jury who would lie like that.'

There are some people who don't know how to observe the ordinary courtesies of public life. Of each was a speaker at a Presbyterian ' social ' held at Halcombe the other night. One of the speakers was a visiting Primitive Methodist minister. After him came another visitor, and this person addressed himself to picking holes in the speech of the yonng P.M. parson, taking exception to some things that he had said, and inventing others and attributing them to him, and through all referring to him contemptuously as ' the young man.' That his patronising and hypercritical tone failed to impress the andience, however, was evident from the chilly manner in which his speech was received. Here is an interesting account of a rough-and-ready bush wedding ceremony at Ahaura, in the South : — The contracting parties appeared to be each about 18 years of age. This world's goods troubled them but little. The wedding dress and outfit was of good and serviceable home material. They had no need of a best man or bridesmaids, so they did without. They had no friends to scatter rice or old boots over or about them. There was no wedding cake or wedding breakfast (except the usual ordinary meal taken at friend Murphy's). The wedding march was played by a dozen urchins on different Instruments ; the bridegroom — probably to get rid of them — passing to the leader of the band ' his solitary ninepence. 1 When the ceremony was over, Mr G. Haines gave them a lift in his express down to the station, and off they sped to carve-out a home in the bush — and they are just the kind who are wanted in the colony, with land to put them on.

. A. .Parnell .shaver astonished the family at breakfast one clay iaßt week by inquiring 'Pa, shall I get chicken pox if I eattoomanyegga?'.;- -^ '„•,r • -"*.' He runs a lending library, and was rather : angry when a young school-girl called in the other day with one of ms novels, and, slapping it down on the counter, said : < I have; Brought this book back. Mamma Bays it is not fit for. me. to read.' Librarian: 'I think your mother must be . mistaken.' Young school- girl: ' Oh, no, she isn't I I've read it all through.' . 'Husband in?' asked the. Truant Officer, cheerfully. ' No,' answered the woman, 'he isn't home.' 'Expecting him Boon ?' asked the officer. ' Well,' the woman replied, thoughtfully, 'I don't know exactly ; I've been -looking for him for seventeen years, and he hasn't shown up yet. You travel round a good deal, and if you see a man who looks as though he'd make me a pretty, good hueband, tell him I'm still a'waitm' and send him along. How's your wife ?' But the Officer wrote something in his book, and without speaking slid softly away, with tha cautious haste of a man walking over a thin place in the ice. Civilisation is still marching forward. At least we presume it is, for the telephone has just been introduced to Masterton. . It is not an unmixed blessing, however, for a scandalised Benedict has been obliged to publish the following notice in the local luminary: — 'Allow me through the Star to warn Eliza and Annie, or any other female who may be of a fickle turn of mind, against using my name on the telephone. lam informed that one of these ladies wished to make an appointment conduct as this is calculated to disturb my domestic relations, I think it necessary to give this warning.' ,At the Bowling Tournament at Wellington, one hundred and eightyfour dozen of lemonade and soda-water went down the throats of the doughty bowlers, who sprinkled the contents with 25 gallons of Glenlivet, varying the liquid draughts with three barrels of ' colonial amber.' Now we know why our reps, have been losing all their matches since their return. They see too many jacks on the green, and frequently play to the wrong one. And that accounts for the fact that the New Plymouth rep 3. have been trying to persuade their better halves that ' bowls dispel lassitude, and is a splendid liver tonic ' But it requires to be mixed with something else. ; A good old colonist, who years ago discharged the debt to nature, having a large family, made an original and effective contract with a doctor for professional attendance and medicines. He paid the physician a salary year in and year out, but only on condition that the family was maintained in good health. Immediately sickness appeared in the house, the doctor was called in and the cheque book closed up ; and immediately the sickness disappeared the doctor went out and the cheque began to be issued again. The doctor considered the contract reasonable, and carried it out honorably. It is needless to say the client was not a Gentile. The idea was too clever for a heathen. You come across some strange obituary notices in the country papers. The notice of the death of a child in a mining township winds upthusly : * Another little prospector recalled by the Great Warden.' Whereupon an exchange remarks that if this sort of thing is followed up, we may expect to see many, variations in the death notices. For instance, an engineer would lament his offspring in these words : ' Another little striker called in from the lock-out by tbe Great Engineer.' Or a Freemason would find the following suitable : ' Another little craftsman initiated by the Grand Directors of Ceremonies.' Or a printer — ' Another little grass hand called in by the Father of the Heavenly Chapel.' Or a sharebroker — ' Another little syndicator enrolled by the Great Promoter.' But there, that is enough. Hero is a chunk of cross-examina-tion from the election petition case at Wellington. Counsel, to witness (a butcher and ex-Mayor of a suburban borough): You paint now and again, I believe ? Witness (with an air of surprise): Oh, a little, for myself ; T don't work for other ~ people. Counsel : A fowl fancier, too, aren't you ? Witness (more bewildered) : Yes, I was at one time. Counsel : Ever combine the arts of fowl-raising and painting ? Witness : What do you mean? Counsel: It was when you were fowl-raising that you did the painting? Witness, (indignantly): No! Counsel : Were you not disqualified as an exhibitor for painting the legs of show fowls ? (Laughter). Witness : I did not paint the fowls. I don't Bee why I should answer the question. Has it anything to do with the case, your Honor? The Chief Justice: Well, it seems to be a question of 'colour.*' (Renewed laughter and discomfiture of witness).