WAIFS AND STRAYS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VII, Issue 8, 21 February 1891, Page 7

WAIFS AND STRAYS.

He is poorest who has least love in his heart. Better to have loved a short girl than never to have loved a tall. The greatest puzzle to a man is how any woman can love him. The happiness of life is so delicate a thing that it shrinks away even upon thinking of it. Barber : ‘ Does the razoi cut all right, sir ?’ Customer : ‘ Well, I should say it did by the looks of my face.’ Let no one despise the day of small duties or small powers. The clock that is not content to strike one will never strike twelve. Amy: ‘Sashes have gone. It’s not the fashion to wear anything round the waist at present,.’ Jack : • Isn't a coatsleeve allowed there occasionally ?’ One day of sickness will do more to convince a young man that his mother is his best friend than seventeen volumes of proverbs. Waiter (at the club) : ‘ There’s a lady outside who says that her husband promised to be home early to-night.’ All (rising) : ‘ Excuse me a moment.’ A woman’s idea of a perfect man is a man like the man she likes best ; a man’s idea of a perfect woman is a woman unlike any he ever knew. Emma: •We saw a sea serpent from the hotel I was at.’ Bertha: ‘Huh! That’s nothing. There were two young men at the hotel were I spent my vacation.’ Alligators invade the hen houses of Louisana planters. A resident of Plaquemine parish, hearing a commotion among his biddies a few nights ago, went out to discover the cause, and was groping in the dark, when something snapped at him, cutting a gash in his eheek. Procuring a lantern and summoning help, he found a big alligator.

The banana is a very prolific fruit, and the produce or an acre will support twenty-five times as many people as the produce of an acre planted with wheat. The whole of the blood in the body passes through the heart in about 32 beats ; in a man of 70 years of age, about 675,920 tons of blood will have passed through his heart during his life. Whether marriage he a failure or not, there can be no doubt that courtship is a grand success. Il is surprising how companionable two persons can be when both aie on their good behaviour. In a police court the other day a blind man recognised a thief who had robbed him by his voice. He picked him out from a number of persons who were brought in and who said ‘ Good morning ’to him. The prisoner confessed. It is a gross breach of etiquette for a Chinaman to wear eye-glasses or spectacles in company, and it is equally impolite to enter a room with the hat off. A gentleman of the Celestial Kingdom always remains covered to show his respect. Tranquillity is the wish of all. The good, while pursuing the traclc of virtue, the great, while following the star of glory, and the little, while creeping in the ruts of dissipation, sigh for tranquillity, and make it the great object which they ultimately hope to attain. < >ld Maids at Auction.—Ancient Babylon did not mean to have any old maids on her hands, and so she declared that every marriageable girl should be put up and sold once a year at public auction. But as only the pretty girls found husbands by this device, the price for the pretty ones was turned into the public coffers as dowiies for their homely sisters. In this way that terrible old sinner found husbands for all her girls. Those men whom she could not catch with beauty she snared with money.

Other Places Other Manners.—A writer in the New York Herald says that in Siam and Burmah every one smokes. While in the United States navy, he visited Bangkok once and was surprised at the indiscriminate manner in which the natives indulged in the use of the weed. Handsome dark-skinned young women, in their many coloured garments were walking about the streets pulling away at their cigarettes. Old women, men, boys, and even the children were smoking. It was a common sight to see the little tots, not over four or five yearsold, with astring of beads

around their necks ami a cigarette over each ear, smoking like a full grown man, as they trotted about as naked a- on the day they were born. Questioning an English si>eaking native, 1 learned that the children were taught to chew the betel nut mixed with tobacco, and to smoke as soon as they are able to walk. Destitution in Paris. Applications for employment in the various departments of Paris were in one year 4,300, of which only 1,110 received employment. A melancholy lesson results from the statistics herein cited that there are throughout the city 7,139 young women with diplomas seeking places as teachers. Fifty four only are chosen. There remains neai ly seven thousand on the pavement of Paris, all experts as instructors, but ignorant of life and destitute of resources. What will become of them ’ The tables compared do not answer that question—let philosophers discuss it. Shaking Hands. —lt would seem that sixty years ago shaking hands between persons of different sexes was haidly proper, and that ten or twenty years earlier, it was considered highly indelicate From the law reports of a divorce case heard in the ‘Court of Arches, November 16, 1828, Sir John Nicholl, in giving judgment, said, that conduct highly blamable and distressing to the feelings of a husband had been proved, but, although thirty witnesses had been examined, no indecent familiarities had been proved beyond a kiss. The shaking of hands when they met was a practice now so fiequent between persons of different sexes, however opinions might differ as to its delicacy, that no unfavourable inference could be deduced thence.’ Dyeing Flowers—Florists and horticulturists have solved the problem of producing new and fashionable shinies in a peculiarly ‘scientific’ manner. Instead of growing new' varieties of roses, which is a process of years, they simply grow ordinary white roses, and dip them in a chemical solution which, in a single hour, converts them into the most magnificent yellow tea-roses, the rare scarlet red, or the peculiar shade of bluish violet which has been one of the favourites of the season. In a similar way pink roses are turned into blossoms of the deepest red.