WAIFS AND STRAYS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 44, 31 October 1891, Page 532

WAIFS AND STRAYS.

The hotter people feel toward each other the cooler they act. About the poorest occupation you can find is to sit down and admire yourself. If ignorance is bliss, the wonder is why so many people complain of being miserable. Man’s love for his sweetheart is often nearly two-thirds jealousy of some other fellow. ‘ I’m not in it,’ sorrowfully sang the mosquito, as he buzzed on the outside of the netting. ‘ I don’t see,’ said Aunt Sary, ‘ why they should want a divorce ; their tempers are entirely combatible.’ One of the greatest tests of good nature is the quantity of sympathy a man can stand without losing his temper. No Woman in This Case.—‘l see they’ve really opened Cleopatra’s coffin.’ ‘Well, what of it?’ ‘There wasn’t any woman in the case. ’ We notice (says a paper) the marriage of Mr Day to Miss Field, which presents this singular anomaly : That although he won the field she gained the day. The fact that the liberty of women has so progressed in Kansas that the ladies pop the question may precipitate a general exodus of worthy but bashful young men from other parts of the country. HE WAS LEFT-HANDED. ‘ Backward, turn backward, O Time, in thy flight,’ With feeling he sang the old lay : For he found by the works that were strewn left and right He was winding the clock the wrong way. Rev. Plink Plunk on Truthfulness.—l hab known men, deah breddern, dat neber told a lie, but I had heard dese same men tangle up de turf into such an unreckonizable mess dat eben Ananias himself would hab a hard tussel to make up a lie to match it. How beautiful is death After all toil and pain and care are o'er To close the eyes upon this fading shore. Followed bv memories of undying love. Welcomed by guardian angels from above How tranquil to resign this labouring breath— How beautiful is death. The man or woman who is only moderately good looking ought to be satisfied. So many people long to be goodlooking. Yet many a man has been worthless because he was good-looking. Many a woman has gone to the devil because she was good-looking. If we take people as we find them, welcoming all their good points, and pass over the others, and being kind and generous to all, we shall come much nearer to the truth about them than if we labour to make a critical analysis of minds and hearts of which we can see only a few fragments. WHERE HE FAILED. He travelled all through Africa, and expeditions led to hunt the lion in his lair, the tiger in his bed, to get from natives iv’ry tusks and give them beads instead, and his name was known to all folks far and wide. He could tell you where the North Pole in its secret regions lay, explain the reason why the night was darker than the day, but he couldn't find his collars which his wife had laid away, though he tried and tried and tried and tried and tried. When Hoops Came In.—lt was in the very early portion of the eighteenth century that the hoop petticoat came in. The skirts were not quilted, but there was a kind of panier drapery attached to the train, the bodice pointed, the elbow sleeves ruffied. In 1709 we read of a black silk petticoat having a red-and-white calico border; cherrycoloured stays, trimmed with blue and silver ; a red and dove-coloured damask gown, flowered with large trees ; a yellow satin apron, trimmed with white Persian silk. a lover's dilemma. She wore her brother’s shirts and ties. His collars, too, I swear. And e’en his natty boating cap Was perciied upon her hair. And he converted to his use Her sash of ribbon red. And wore her tennis hat besides Upon his curly head. They looked alike so very much You’d scarce know one from t’other. So I don’t know to which I ‘ popped,’ The sister or the brother. A Corroborated Martyrdom.—A story is told of the Arab martyr Geronimo, who, after intolerable tortures, had liquid plaster poured over him and was built up alive in the Fort des Vingt-quatre Heures, in Algiers. After three hundred years, during which the tale was gradually treated (like most tales of human cruelty) as a romance, the wall was taken down, and he was found. Plaster of-Paris was thrown into the mould, and the life-size of the figure of Geronimo appeared, and is now to be seen in the museum. His crime was having been a convert to Christianity, and the demon who decreed his punishment was one Euldj Ali. CAN it Be.—A curious incident occurred recently on one of the bridges crossing the river Limat which flows through the city of Zurich, illustrating the sagacity of the gulls frequenting the Swiss lakes. A gentleman who was in the habit of feeding the birds with meat, which they like very much, had his. hat knocked off into the rapid current below by one of the more eager of the terns. The onlookers laughed at the mishap, and a boat was about to be put out into the stream to secure the trophy, when, to the surprise of every one, a gull was noticed to dart down upon the floating hat, and after several ineffectual attempts succeeded at last in rising with it in his beak and flying towards the bridge, where he dropped the well-soaked hat, and the bystanders secured it for its owner. Absent-minded Dr. Peabody.—Dr. Peabody of Harvard, who has just entered the ranks of the octogenarians, is a little absent minded at times, and this incident is cited in illustration of that infirmity : One summer day, having come into Boston from Cambridge, and having alighted from the car at Bowdoin Square, be turned a sharp corner and collided with an elderly gentleman who was standing with his hat off, wiping the perspiration fiom his forehead, but who held his hat in such a way as to give the appearance of begging. Dr. Peabody seeing the hat dropped a quarter into it with his customary kind remark. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was holding the hat, put the money in his pocket, solemnly thanked his old friend, the giver, and passed on.