Varieties.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 432, 2 October 1869, Page 3

Varieties.

-^ Of a person who died lately at Betany, Connecticut, the obituary says : — " He was as honest a man as ever lived, and had worn no hat for forty years." When Rabelais was on his death-bed a consultation of physicians was called. " Dear gentlemen," said the wit to the doctors, raising his head, " let me die a natural death." A girl happening to hear her mother speaking of going into half-mourning, said, " Why are we going into half-mourning, mamma ; are any of our relations half-dead ? " A crusty old bachelor, not liking the way bis landlady's daughter had of appropriating his hair oil, filled the bottle with liquid glue the day before the ball to which the girl was invited. She stayed at home.

m They who teach the young idea how to ride on the velocipede, are called by the Americans Velocipedagogues. A New York exchange, noticing an address soon to be delivered by a popular editor, remarks that " those who have never heard Demosthenes or Cicero should hear the legitimate successor of those high old boys." 7-JVlrs Caddle on the Velocipede.-— lf wives had their way they'd burn every velocipede in town ! And what was the matter with you last night ? I couldn't get a wink of sleep. Your legs kept going up and down all night like pump handles. Velocipede motion, was it ? Put your feet in the stirrups and turn, and that throws your knees up and down, does it ? — Now don't tell me it's nothing when I get used to it, because thaVs something I won't get used to! It is bad enough to sleep with a man when he is quiet, but to have the bedclothes flopping up and down all night as regularly as that clock ticks, is a little too much, velo.ipede or no velocipede. Velocipedes.— Josh Billings says, on the subject of velocipedes : — lt don't take much stuff to build a filosipede. lam bold tew say that a man could make one ov 'em out of a cingle old plank, and then hey enough stuff left over to splinter broken limbs, or make, perhaps, a corfin. A filosipede can't stand alone, and that single fact iz enuff to condemn the thing in my eye. I don't want to have anything to do with any hopeless critter that can't stand alone, unless, I might add, it is a purty woman going for to faint. I don't think it will ever get intew gineral use among farmers, az it haz no conveniences for a hay rigging, nor even a place to strap a trunk ; and as tew going tew church on it, the family would have tew go one at a time, and the rest walk. So of course the thing is killed in that direction.