Amusing.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2116, 30 January 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

Amusing.

Wiikv you see the headline, "A Base Deceiver' 1 iv tho papers you know that ? t refers to a man. If it was a woman she would bo a soprano or con. alto deceiver. FuvNttiK is four years old, and not much accustomed to nausea. One mo. •- ing ho was pretty sick, and said, very sadly, "I don't know what makes me joggle so inside.' A roi.T sent to an editor a contribution, entitled, " Why do I live ?" and the editor answered : " Because you send your contributions by post, instead of br" ig'mg them in person." 00UMN f.OVE. Just one word, sweet cousin mino Ere we #> to dress and dme : I f 1 ever chanco t<> won, Cousin, hho must bo like you, And tlio one who comes the nearest To yourself will bo the dcircst Type of what my love must bo ; Cousin, what if you aro she? "It is a settled principle, your honor," said an eminent Q. C., "that causes always produce effects," "They always do for the Lawyers," bladly responded the judge, "but I've sometimes known a single cause to deprive a client of all his effects !" " A \\ caltuy gentleman, who owns a country seat, on one occasion nearly lost his wiTe, who fell into a river wh'ch flows through his estate. He announced the narrow escape to his friends, expecting their congratulations. One of them — an old bachelor — wrote as follows: "I always told you that river was too shallow'?' They wore walking in the moonlight together. They were to be married the following week, when Augustus, leaning down, remarked : "If the atlantic ocean were an inkstand, and the canopy of heaven and the level ground of the earth were a sheet of paper, it would not bo sufficient for mo to write my love for you." A lawyer upon a circuit in Ireland, who was pleading the cause of an infant plaintiff, took the child up in his arms and preseuted it to the jury suffused with tears. This had a great effect, until the opposite lawyer asked the child, "What makes you cry?" "He pinched me," answered the innocent. The whole court was convulsed with laughter. "There's no use talkin". I'm going to get married," said a bachelor acquaintance the other day, while busily engaged in sewing. "Here I have worked just 20 minutes by the watch trying to get this needle threaded, and then just as I succeed I pull the thread out. Finally, I got it threaded, and now, after sewing on the button good and strong, I find I have got it on the wrong side, and I have all my work to go over again." A ltttle girl had been visiting the "ragged school," and was sadly grieved with the rags and t'irt of tho poor children. At night, when she came to say her evening prayer, she added to her usual petition these words — "And bless the poor ragged children ; give them kind fathers and mothers, and new clothes, and glvo them all a bath." A Refreshment- bar on a northern ra"way is kopt by a veteran baker. A sprightly young traveller compla'-ted of one of his pies the other day. The old man becamo angry. "Young man," he said severely, "I made pies before you were born." "Yes," responded the traveller, " I fancy this must bo one of those sme pies !" " I DEO your pardon, madam," said a gcntloman, lifting bis hat. politely to a ilchly dressed woman on tho street, " but your face is strangely fam'Mar to me. I i -n sure that I have met you beforo." " Misthcr Jones," rcp"ed the lie' "ydressed woman ; " it's myself thai knows ye. Oi'm your cook." An Irish jockey, when selling 1 a rag to a gentleman, frequently observfd, vlth emphatic earnestness, that he wn an honest horse. After the purchase had been effected tho gentleman asked him what ho moant by an honest horse. "Why, si I*,"1 *," replied the seer, "whenever I rode hime he always threatened to throw me off, and ho certainly never deceived me." A sailor, the other day, in describing his first efforts to become nautical, said that just at the close of a dark night he was sent up aloft to try if he could see a light. As ho was no great favourite with the lieutenant, he was not hailed for some hours. "Aloft there!" at length was heard from the lieutenant, "Ay, ay, sir." I'Do you see a light !" " Yes, bir." " What light?" •• Daylight, sir."

A FRAGMENT. Thrco cups ofwino a prudent man may take ; The fir-jt of these for constitution's snko ; The second to tho friend he loves the best ; The third and last to lull him to his reht, Then homo to bed !— But, if a fourth he poms, This is the cup of Folly, and not ours ; Loud, senseless talking on the fifth attends, Tho M\th breeds feuds and falling out of friends ; Seven beget blows and faces stained with gore ; Eight, and tho watch patrol breaks ope the door ; Mad with the ninth, another cup goes round, And tho swilled sot drops, reaching to tbo ground.

Nomfxclature. —Mr David Dndler Field (says the Pall Mall Gazette) recently entertained the members of the American Geographical Society with a dissertation on the nomenclature of cities and towns in the United States. He gave a long list of curious names taken from a railway guide. In it we find the following :— Hogspen, Tombstone, Cut Shin, Zan Bet, R'-whide, Black Jack, Dirttown, Jug Tavern, and Cut Off. Some of the classical names are striking if not appropriate: — Brutus, Babylon, Cicero Diana, Hannibal, Ilion, Lysander, Jerusalem, Marathon, Troy, Ovid, Pompey, Romulus, Solon, Sempronius, Ulysses, Virgil and many more ocenre under this head. Then there is Vienna, Java, Naples, Milan, Ossian, Volney, Wilna, Malta, Dryden, Denmark, Genoa, Juntas, Parna, Salamanca, Lodi, and the like. Mr Field is disgusted with all this, and with the constant use of "ville" as a termination, as in M'Crawvilel, and proposes that the sonorous old Indian names, Buch as Tuscarora, Susquehanna, Monongohela, and Alabama, should be more generally used ; where theie fail, the names of great \ Americans, or some natural object, might bo employed. Even pure invention is better than Pompey, or Tombstone, or Denmark. We can heartily wish Mr Field success in his crusade in favour of more beauty and truth in American place namesThe Andre Monument.— The motives and the identity of the destroyer of the Andr<s monument are still, a New York correspondent of the S. M. Herald says, matters of conjecture only. One theory is that it was the work of Irish dynamitards, inspired by hostility to anything even remotley British. It is also suggested that the apparent displeasure at honouring the memory of of a traitor to the revolutionary cause was merely a cover for an intended rebuke of Mr Cyrus Field's rather ostentatious friendship ■with distinguished Englishmen. Thus it has been ill-naturedly alleged that the monument commemorated Andre" less than it did the fact that Dean Stanley was the guest of Cyrus Field. Dean Stanley wrote the inscription on tho monument, in which Mr Field's name was put forward somewhat prominently. Archdeacon Farrar visited the spot very recently, and he wrote the following testimony to Andr6 : — "Brave, gifted, young; he did and dared all at his country's bidding, and died for her a shameful death. Yet England buried him in Westminster Abbey ; Washington mourned his hard fate ; and a generous son of America, which honours her own Nathan Halo, raised this monument on the spot where his gibbet stood aud lite body lay. — (Signed) Frfdbric W. Fakpap. Archdeacon of Westminster."