GOD SENT THE WATER.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 259, 8 September 1879, Page 2

GOD SENT THE WATER.

From a lengthy account of the frightful suffering! of a number of shipwrecked sailors off the coast of California, the Dunedin Herald extracts the following extraordinary instance of a sailor's faith, told by a surveyor:-" One of the men George was becoming Tery weak, and I saw he was going to die, I told him ho must try to keep up, but he replied that lujgid- not think he would live very longjSl asked him if he thought he was g<-IP O God, and he said 'yes,' I then .N , W George, when you get to where GU \\,'tell him to /■ send us some water,' He cold me that he would, and then begged me not to throw him overboard as soon as he died. He became insemible and in a short time died. I let his body remain under cover all one day, and then put it into the sea. I believe that he kept his promise, for soon after he died a squall came on, and the rain fell in torrents. I held out my sou' wester untill it was full, and treasured the water. The other man laped the waters from the sides of the vessel just as dogsfy do."

A weaver, tired and weary, wending his way slowly by the banks of the Forth and Clyde Canal towards St Mungo, hailed the steersman of a passing barge and asked him if he would " tak' him on to Glesca 1 ." "Ou, ay," replied the bargeman. " gin ye'll work yer passage, mon." "A'll do that," answered the weaver, with joyful alacrity. " There then," cried the steerman to him, at the same time casting a ropes end ashore—" tak' that, a' pu'." A. compositor, in setting up the toast, " Woman-without her, man would be a savage," got the punctuation in the wrong place, which made it read;" Woman without her man, would be a savage." The same compositor in setting the proverb "The wicked flee when no man pursueth, but the righteous is bold as a lion," made it read, " The wicked flea, when no man pursueth but the righteous, is bold as a lion."

A rustic moralist: Rector going his lounds; "An uncommonly fine pig, I declare, Dibblis 1" Contemplating villager ! " Ah, yes sir, if we was only all of as as fit to die as him, sir!"

"' Can a clergyman marry himself!" asks an exchange, We suppose he can but are afraid he would not be a very couple, A patch on the seat of a boy's trousers is something new uuder the son.—When we were young it always used to be something old. "Dothey ring two bells for school?" asked a father of his ten-year-old daughter. "No; they ring one bell twice," ■ was the reply. " Mamma, go down on your hands and knees a minute, please." (< What on earth should I do that for, my pet V " 'Cause I want to draw an elephant." An Atalanta girl sat on her lover's hat and kept him three hours over time, The next time that young man goes to see hii girl he should hang his hat up on a peg, instead of holding it on hi» lap, Never, except on one occasion, was a certain prominent newspaper man of Norwich known to refuse to take a joke, and that was the other noon when while indulging in a short nap the boys in the office inked his eye-glasses and sent him homo with a lantern to apologise for being out till midnight, A young lady correspondent sends us the following recipe, which she says she can recommend from experience:—" For cracked lips.—lf very bad, apply a carefully selected moustache at about 10 p.m, If this does not cure the pain it will at any rate cause it to be forgotten," The last sentimental agony in songs is: Who will come above me sighing When the grass grows over me ? "We can't say positively, but if the cemetery fence in his neighborhood is in the usual repair it will probably be a cow. "Did the defendants approach the plaintiff's seriatim ?" inquired an attorney, in a case of assault and battery the other day. "No,sir," was the reply; "he went at'em with a poker!" Old Deacon Pilkins said to himself : ut Falstrff asks, 'What's honor !' as though it was hard to tell. But let my wife sit behind another woman at church, and she'll tell what'* on her in less than two minutes." "Twelve pence make one shilling," said the schoolmaster. "Now go on, sir. Twenty shillings make one—what 1" They make one mighty glad these times," replied the boy, and the teacher' who hadn't got his last month's salary yet, ; concluded the boy was about right.

It.—" In one of the California mines a ball has been given a thousand feit below the surface, About fifty couples were invited, The ladies were dressed in calico costumes, and together with their escorts, wore lowered into the mine at nine o'clock, They danced two or three hours." Mammas with daughters on their hands will do a good deal, even in this country (says a London paper), to catch a coal Crceaus, or owner of a big Bonanza, in any form; but actually to pursue him into this subterranean treasury is a Yankee notion as yet unimported. Our fortune-fishers will do their level best to draw out the Leviathan with a hook, but they draw the line at diving after him, They will descend to anything toept the bowels of the earth, and will lower themselves to any eitent in spirit so long as they are not required to lower themselves in the flesh in a basket.

I The London Daily Telegraph says : I One effect of the Zulu war ha 3 teen to furnish a fresh illustration of an old truth —that England as a marine power can '* bring her strength to bear at remote distances with astonishing rapidity. The First Lord of the Admiralty, in returning thanks for the Navy, appropriately drew attention to the relief of Ekowe. It was on thelltli of February that the Government knew the extent of the peril, and so swiftly were the needful measures adopted that two battalions sent from England were in combat at Ginghilovo on the 2nd of April, and on the fifty-first day from the 11th of February Ekowe was relieved. Before the 31st March, another battalion, a battery fully horsed, and three companies of the Army Service Corps were also in Natal, which is about 7,000 miles from pur shores, But it was not only the centre of power which had shot forth its reserved strength. England is an anchor in her island possessions or afloat on her ships of war all over the world. The electric wire had set in motion the 27th Regiment, quartered in Ceylon, and a, transport carried that gallant corps to South Africa in good time for the march upon Ekowo. A few troops, we believe, likewise hastened from the Mauritius. Whenever there is danger, her Majesty's ships appear promptly on the scene of action."