Vareties

Western Star, Issue 66, 13 February 1875, Page 7

Vareties

A Week Conclusion. —Saturday night. A Swell among Flowers, —A dandelion. Definition of a Waltz. l —Hugging set to,music. What kind of a ship has two mates and no captain ?—A courtship. Take away ambition and vanity, aud where wffi be your heroes and patriots ? A good-natured spinster used to boast that she always had two good beaux—her elbows.

.Bad for the Stockings.—A placard in a barber’s shop window announces, “ Boots blacked inside.’?.

If yoursistor fell info, a. well, why-couldn’t yon rescue her ?—Because you couldn’t be a brother and assist her too.

A young widow in New Orleans, being asked after.her husband’s health, answered with a softquiet smile, “ He’c dead I thank you.”

' ".Lord, what a cow,” was the approving remark’of a teetotal judge of Vermont after swallowing a potent punch' which had beer, offered to him as a glass of milk. “No man,” said a wealthy hut weak-headed barrieferi” ".should be admitted to the bar who hadn’t an independent landed property.” “Ma • I ask, sir,", said Curran, “ How many acres ittakes to make a wiseacre P”

Progression is the watchword of the hour, hu‘ in Missouri mothers haul their disebedient children over., fc.hq knee and' strike on (ho same old spot that Romans did 300 u years ago. The chaplain attending Captain Jack before his execution, told him a glowing, story of Heaven and the Happy Land ;, when Captain Jack answered, “ You know God —you believe all this ; now, I give you ten horses take my place to-morrow.’

An American paper, in noticing the presentation of a silver cup to a contemporary, says, “He needs no cup. He cap. drink from any vessel that contains liquor—whether the neck of. a bottle, the mouth of a demijohn, the spile of a keg, or the bung of a barrel.” - ' ' • ” “But Paul, how can the Spirit be in us, and we in the Spirit at the same time ?” said a young man to a negro preacher. “ Oh, dar’s no puzzle about dat. It’s like dat poker ; I puts it in de fire, and it get’s red hot. Now, do poker’s in do fire, and de fire’s in de poker.” An Englishman holding forth in the evening in a Scotch hotel to some friends and strangers in the house on the subject of cremation of bodies, in place of the present mode of burial, wound up by declaring that he had about made up his mind to leave directions with his friends and executors that, when he died, his body should bo cremated, A canny old Scotchman, who did not relish the innovation, ‘‘ set the table in a roar,” by remarking, “Ye seem in a great hurry, ma freen. A’ that may possibly be ordained to be dnne, without any bother to yoor friends and executors, at the Lord's gnid time and pleasure.”

Douglas Jerrolcl’s reputation for instantaneous repartee, if it has occasionally been rivalled, has certainly never been surpassed. No readier coiner of mots—ringing harmoniously as of the purest gold, and bearing each the .Uru • guinea stamp—ever scattered more affluently the largest of his wit amongst those by whom he chanced at any moment to be surrounded. Even the victims of his sarcasm, if they winced, were exhilarated. Who could resist, or seriously, for that matter, who could resent the most feering gibe he ever uttered? His reply to the manager’s boast as to. one of his company, ‘ There’s Dash, now; why,' he’s been bred upon the boards I’ was, ‘ He looks as if he’d been cut out of them.’ His comment on the enthusiast about sheep’s heads, who, after a supper on that homely dish, laid down his knife and fork, exclaiming, ‘ Well, sheep’s head for ever, say !!’ ran, ‘There’s egotism,’. His eager enquiry, when someone, raving about an air, declared, ‘ Whenever I hear it, it carries me away,’ was, ‘Can nobody whistle if ?’ His answer to Mr Planclie’s interrogation, 4 Do you remember my Baroness in Ask uo Questions ?’ ‘ Yes, indeed ; I don’t think l ever saw a piece of yours without being struck with your barrenness ’ —his quiet put-dowu of one who majestically interposed between two ’excited-dis-putants) and who had begun by saying to them majestically," Gentlemen, all I want is commonsense,’ * Exactly/ that is precisely what you do want ’—ills 'addition to an order for a bottle of old port, ‘Not 1 elder port!’—his answer to a tinsy ‘ gont ’ who staggered up to him in the street with a hiccupped inquiry as to which was the'way to the judge and ; jury, ‘'Straight'on, young gentleman ; keep exactly iu the way you’re going; and you’re sure gat there!’ '•n 7 ‘• ’ ' ' ..-• *V '