All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11, 18 March 1909, Page 438

All Sorts

Angry Caller: ' Look -here, I- understand you called "J" J me a liar in this morning's paper. Am I right?' 1 Editor : ' No ; we only print news.' 'My boy,' said the baker to the Scottish laddie who complained of the quality of his pies, ' I made pies afore ye was born.' ' Aye,' said the boy, sadly, ' this is ane o' them. 5 < - " Miss Jones:" 'It seems to me that all the nicest men are married.' Mrs. Brown : ' Well, "dear, they weren't always so nice, you know; they've only been caught early and- tamed.' Miss Ellen Terry, in speaking of the many women r who want to go on the stage, said that every woman ' under thirty thinks she is an actress, and every actress (she added) believes -she is under thirty. -i..Ldo.n't want;my hair brushed over my forehead any longer,' declared Harold. 'I want a crack in it, like" father's.' ' The Tenant : ' This wall is fu,lj of enormous cracks," and if you don't fix it it. will soon fall down.' The Landlord: 'I'll have it papered at once.' ■ A lady one day remarked to the English novelist, Bulwer Lytton7" how odd it was that a dov.e (colombe) should have been* sent out to find^the Old World, and Columbus (Colombe) should have found the New. Sir Henry Drummond Wolff says in his b°ok, ' Random Recollections,' that Bulwer Lytton -immediately replied: 'Yes; and the one came from Noah ; the other from Genoa.' A country man arid his wife paid a visit to the seaside." While the simple pair were walking on the beach one evening they suddenly noticed the revolving light of • a ■ lightship. The old lady gazed at it with. open, eyes fot some niinutes, then she turned to her' husband with a " puzzled look. ' Well,' she exclaimed, 'if the man in that -ship hasn't lit that light this forty times, and it has gone out every timel' A small boy, told to write down during class what he - wanted to be when he grew up, was found to have Z written ' gardener.' ' But I never knew you wanted to be a gardener !' exclaimed the teacher in surprise ' I don't,' said the small boy, sadly, ' but I don't know how to spell engineer.' One night as a doctor was driving into a village he saw a man, a little the worse for liquor, amusing a .crowd of spectators with the antics of his trick dog. The. doctor watched -him awhile and said : ' Sandy, how do you manage to train your dog? I can't teach mine to do anything.' Sandy, with that simple look in his eyes, said : •' Well, ', you see," doctor, you have to know more'n the dog, or you can't learn him nothing.' An Armenian girl goes to school at four or five "years "old, but before that she has probably learned her' 'letters,' which is almost an education, in itself, as the Armenian alphabet contains thirty-nine. She' learns those " letters from a small slab of wood on which they are printed. This slab is fastened to a handle, making it something like a hair-brush in shape. ' The Armenians boast that their formidable alphabet is so" perfect as to give every sound known to any other nation. Put to the test of the thermometer, it appears that' . the normal temperature of the body is almost invariable, regardless of latitude or season. Putting the bulb of the thermometer under the tongue of an Eskimo. at the frozen" north or of a man under the blazing sun of the tropics, ,-we find that in each case, the body being in a state of health, the temperattire is about the same, the difference " not amounting to a degree. We may say absolutely that the average normal temperature of a human being is about 98.5 degrees F., just as we may say that at sea level water - boils at 212 degrees F. „• To most persons in tlie temperate zones a banana is a banana. But' the truth is" that there are- over sixty ■known varieties of the fruit, "with as great, or~ greater, variation in character as in the different kinds of apples. Hawaii is said to have something over forty distinct varieties of the fruit, most of which have been introduced by the whites. Some of these are of extremely delicate and delicious flavor, while other kinds are used, v if at all, only ■ when cooked in various ways. There is scarcely a city •house lot or country- ' kuleana ' or homestead which does not have a clump or -two of bananas, which grow witb^ practically no care, new -plants, or suckers, shooting up to replace the ones which have fruited and been removed.-