HE IS BUSY NOW.

West Coast Times, Issue 7300, 22 January 1889, Page 4

HE IS BUSY NOW.

They were sitting together in the warm parlor, saying little but thinking much. The little clock on the mantelpiece for a considerable time had been the only speaker. Its tick, tick, tiok, tick seemed to say, " Kiss her, kiss her, kiss her, kiss her." To the maiden it said, "Leap year, leap year, leap year, leap year," and the reiteration of this phrase forced the maid to break the silence. "How funny some people are?" she Baid. " Funny ?" 44 Yea ; Borne people who are going to be married." " Oh !" " Yes ; some want to be married in a balloon, some on the middle arch of a bridge, some in a boat, some down in a coal mine—" " Yes, I have noticed it." " What 1b the object, I wonder ?" " Marriage, of course." "But I mean their object in getting married out of the usual way." "Well, I'll tell you what I think. j They get married in this way so that they I can tell their children and their grandchildren that they were married under peculiar circumstances, as, for instance : ' Your mother and me, were married in a coal mine,' or, * Sour mother and me, children, were married in a balloon.' " There was a pause. Then the maiden, with a glowing cheek, said — " I've been thinking, John " " Yes?" he added Interrogatively. "I've been thinking how funny it would be——" (A pause and deeper blushO •'Well, Bella, youv'e been thinking what." "I've been thinking how funny It would be if " "Yes?" "If, when the subject of marriage comes up thirty or forty years hence, you could point to me and say, 'Why, children, your grandmother proposed to me in leap year, and we were married a few weeks after." John is very busy these days furnishing a nice little cottage, and Bella is sup> erintending the making of her weddingdress.

A man named Birchin waß sentenced to three months' hard labor at Portsmouth for assaulting his wife. He was kneeling upon his wife, and flourishing a knife, and saying he intended repeating the Whitecnapel murders, when he waß intern rupted. A German named Killian, who was convicted of sending military plans and a cartridge from France to Germany, waa sentenced at Nice to penal servitude for five years, and to pay a fine of five thou» eand fiance.