WAIFS AND STRAYS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 12, 19 March 1892, Page 266

WAIFS AND STRAYS.

No matter how small the scandal, there’s always enough of it to go around. It is as easy to tell a lie as it is to tell the truth, but it is not half so lonesome.

A toper said : ‘ If water rots the boots, what effect must it have on the coating of the stomach ?’ An American woman has shocked the Prince of Wales. She is the electric girl. No one else could.

The longer a man lives the less condemnation he has for the suspicious fellow who mistrusts everybody. ‘ Oh, dearest Emma, may I row you through the river of life ?’ ‘ Yes, but you must let me manage the rudder !’ The efforts a young girl makes to find out who her husband will be, a married woman makes to find out where hers is. As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those who have just turned saints. A bachelor, upon reading that ‘ two lovers will sit up all night with one chair in the room,’ said it could not be done unless one of them sat on the floor. Such ignorance is painful. THE CONCEITED MARRIED MAN. Lives there a married man with soul so dead. Who never to himself hath smiled and said : * Had I but single lived till now, you see. Those pretty girls would die to capture me.’ A young and handsome man was once asked why he had married a rich old woman. ‘My friend,’ he replied, ‘ let me ask you what poor young man, in a hurry to get an enormous bank-note cashed, troubles himself to look at the date of it.’ The greatest novelty in dolls has now been invented in Nuremberg, the great German town for dollsand playthings. A machine in the doll causes it to move its hand and write neat little letters on a slate or on paper. Whole sentences c an be written to the great amusement of children. A Yorkshire vicar once received the following notice regarding a marriage from a parish home : * This is to give you notice that I and Miss Jemima Arabella Brearly is cornin’ to your church on Saturday afternoon nex, to undergo the operation of - matrimony at your hands. Please be promp, as the cab is hired by the hour. ’ Peculiar Accident.—A young man in Berlin, Germany, stepped upon a cherry, slipped, fell against a window and had his nose almost severed from his face. A young lady came forward and she had carelessly thrown the accessorial fruit upon the side walk, and her parents promptly defrayed the bill of the surgeon who stitched on the young man’s nose, amounting to 450 marks. A certain clergyman of Halifax, Nova Scotia, while addressing his congregation on the subject of the Prodigal Son, is said to have affected his hearers even more than he anticipated when, with tears in his eyes and pathos in his voice, he pictured the aged father, overjoyed at the return of his long-lost boy, commanding them to bring forth and kill the little calf which had been fattening for years and years and years.

A Strange Crime.—An extraordinary case is reported from a village in Western Hungary. A man, aged about thirty, asked for shelter over night from a peasant woman whose husband was absent at the time. He said that he had come from America, and displayed a heavy purse containing about seven thousand florins. The woman, whose cupidity was aroused, cut his throat during the night and concealed the money. When her husband returned he recognised in the murdered man their own son, who had emigrated sixteen years before.

A Pathetic Incident.—When the uniforms worn in ‘ The Soudan ’ arrived at New York, a touch of pathos was added to their unpacking by the following incident :—They had been bough t from the English War Department, those uniforms that had been used by the soldiers in the African campaign. From thepocketsof one of the coats fell the photograph of a cheery-faced, light-haired English girl. The corner of the picture was gone, as if torn away by a bullet. Acioss the lowest part of the picture was a dark red stain, through which could be faintly seen the written words : ‘ Your loving Nellie.’ Nobody knows who she was.

An Artist's Remonstrance.—Here is a characteristic story about Worth, the great Parisian man-milliner :—A lady of high position once ventured to remonstrate with the great man because he had charged her one hundred and twenty pounds for a ball dress. ‘ The material,’ she said, ‘ could be bought for twenty pounds, and surely the work of making up would be well paid with five pounds more.’ ‘ Madame,’ replied the milliner, in his loftiest manner, ‘ go to M. Meissonier, the painter, and say to him, “ Here is a canvas, value a shilling, and here are colours value four shillings. Paint me a picture with these colours on that canvas, and I will pay you one and threepence.” What will he say ? He will say, “ Madame, that is no payment for an artist.” I say more. I say, if you think my terms too high, pay me nothing and keep the robe. Art does not descend to the pettiness of the higgler.’

A Husband’s Mistake.—A highly amusing scene was enacted one day in the usually solemn atmosphere of the office of the Commissary of Police for the Faubourg-Mont-martre, Paris. A few minutes previously a policeman had, at the request of a gentleman, arrested a well-dressed young lady, who declared that she was his wife, who had run away from and robbed him three years ago. The constable did his duty in spite of the angry protests of the lady, who declared that she not only had never seen her self-styled husband before, but was not married at all. ‘ How dare you deny that you are my wife ?’ continued the man. ‘ You think you can brave me because you have dyed your hair.’ At this imputation the young lady, who gave her name, and described herself as ‘ an actress ’ at the Varieties, became furious, and threatened to deprive her accuser violently of the means of dyeing his cranial adornment by leaving him none to operate upon. The Commissary, acting as a peacemaker, sent to the Prefecture for the photograph of the real wife, and on finding no resemblance between the two women, told the gentleman to go about his business, warning him to be more careful in the future.