The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-03-30 00:00:00

AgERICAN HUMOUR.

A Chicago gentleman, who recently travelled
through Ohio, says that everyjmdy he met called potatoes
" taters," except one young lady, who called him a " small-
pertater."
A New York paper calls a flower-girl on Broadway,
who sells rose-buds, "Buddhist,"

" The Apple of My Eye had Wed Another," is the
title of a forlorn new ballad.

A sympathetic Tennessee reporter writes an account
of the shooting of a man, and says :—" The bullet penetrated
his stomach, whence it was recovered by the use of an emetic,
to that the lead was not lost."

An aristocratic New Yorker, on being requested by
a rich and vulgar young fellow for permission to marry
"one of his girls," gave this rather crushing reply :
" Certainly ; which would you prefer, the housemaid or the
cook?"

*convict in Sing Sing prison (New York), who
speaks seven languages, was asked if that was the reason of
his being sent there. "Oh, no, he replied "I came not
here for speaking so many languages, but for writing too
many hands." He was sent there for forgery.
The sweet singer of Michigan was smart enough for
the Chicago interviewer. " You were the oldest of the
family, were not you?" he said. "No, of course not," replied
the poetess, "my father and mother were older than me."
A Detroit lunatic left his house a year ago, and has
been wandering about ever since under the impression that
he is somebody else, and yet retaining a particular interest in
his real self. Now and then he writes to his wile to inquire
after Per husband, and especially to know "whether he has
got over that crazy At yet." The case is a curious one.

-
A man in Oregon, on the evening of the recent
earthquake, had informed his wife that he had an important
business appointment which he was reluctantly obliged to
keep. When the shock came he rushed home with a
billiard cue in hfs hand, whichhe had forgotten to replace;
and now his wife won't hear of any business appointments
after eight o'clock in the evening.
"Do you belong to this boat?" said a passenger
on a Mississippi steamer to a rough-looking old man.—" No,
the boat belongs to me I " quietly responded the stranger ;
and so it did, and several other steamboats also.

A coroner in Delaware, while holding an inquest
on a body, summoned eighteen women and made them tell
their ages and now his midnight dreams are interrupted by
fclks shooting through his doors.
In a little town in Missouri a lady teacher was exer-
cising a class of juveniles in mental arithmetic. She com-
menced the question : "If you buy a cow for ten dollars—"
when up came a little hand. "What is it, Johnny ?"
" Why you can't buy no kind of a cow for ten dollars. Father
sold one for sixty dollars the other day, and she war a regu-
lar old scrub at that."

This is the latest achievement of Chicago, in its
ridicule of the alleged large feet of the ladies of a rival
city: "Last Tuesday, as a St. Louis belle was putting on a
pair of slippers she had not worn since February, she found
a missing seal-skin Jacket in the toe of one of them."
Model verdict of a Yankee coroner's jury :—" we
do believe, after due inquiries, and according to our best
knowledge, that we do not know how, when, and where the
Wd infant came to his death."

"Will yon please insert this obituary notice ? "
asked an old gentleman of a country editor. "I make bold
to ask it because I know the deceased had a great many
friends about hero who'd be glad to hear of his death."