The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1869-12-04 00:00:00

HUMOROUS JOTTINGS.

A clergyman said, in a recent sermon, that the path
of rectitude had been travelled so little of late years that it
was completely run to grass.
Two wags were speaking about the fancy dresses
they intended wearing at a forthcoming ball. "Oh,'' said
one, "I shall go disguised in liquor." "Don't," was the
immediate reply, "every one will recognise you."
An American contemporary has the following :
'• Kicking Bird, who has recently succeeded to the chief-
tainship of the Kiowa Indians, is said to be a savage of re-
markable address, eloquence, and influence."
A Western editor has placed over his marriage head.
lug a cut representing a large trap, sprung, with the motto
"The trap down; another ninny caught."
A young man who hag lately taken a wife says be
did not find it half so hard to get married as he did to get the
furniture, and when it came to getting the bread and butter
he had to fall back on the old folks.
A satirical French author says :—" When I lost my
wife eveTy family with which I was acquainted offered me
another; but when I lost my hone not one of them offered to
make him good.
. Brigham Young is well enough satisfied with multi-
, (erten. marriage, because his spouses have no resident
I parents ; but younger Stomaos arc beginning to find out
that the real and iiisliptrabie objection to polygaMe consists,
not so much in a plurality of wives as in a multiplicity of
mothers-in-law.
"If God ever made a nuisance," said General
flatter the other day to a reporter who had called to " inter-
view " him, "the interviewing reporter is one, and you can
make a personal application of the statement if you want to."
The .:eporter left
"Writ, my good boy, do you know what ' syntax
means 1" said a schoolmaster to the child of a teetotaller.
"Ye,, sir; the duty upon spirits."
A woman offering to sign a deed, the judge asked her
(according to the statute,) it her husband compelled her to
sign it. " lie compel me I" said the woman, "no ; nor
twenty like him."
Mark Twaiu thinks that soda water is not reliable
for a steady drink_ It is too gassy. The next morning after
drinking 38 bottles he found himself full of gas and as tight
ass balloon. He hadn't an article of clothing that he cduld
wear, except his umbrella.
A stoical Scotchman was addressed by his sick wife
—" 0, John, I shan't leave this bed alive" " Please theeself.
Betty, and the% please me," returned John, with great equa-
nimi y. "t have heels a good wife to you, John," persisted
the dying woman. " Betty, middlin!" responded
the matter-of-fact husband.
Au American editor says his attention was first
drawn to matrimony by the akilful manner in which a pretty
gill handled a Mom. A brother editor says the manner in
which his wife handles a broom is not so very pleasing.
"That you believe you have a call to preach is all
very well, as for as it goes," said an old doctor of divinity to
a theological shudent But we must wait aqii see whether
people think they haves call to hear you."
A lady who was more favoured by fortune than edu-
cation, at a party she gave desired her daughter to play
-the fashionable new malady she got from Baosey's last
week."
A young man having blown his brains out in North
Carolina became a young lady named Susan rejected hie love,
the coroner's jury that "Baton the ease" brought inn verdict
of Susancide."
The son of a Western clergyman excused himself for
a pack of cards which tell from his pocket during his valedic-
tory, by saying he had on his father's coat!
It is announced that the directors of the Midland
Railway Company, taught by bitter experience the folly of
not adopting tne block system of signalling, have at last de-
cided to apply it to the greater portion of their system. Had
this decision been arrived at earller it is probable that the
collision at the Trent Junction, and some others which have
recently occurred on this line, might have been prevented,
to the advantage alike of the company and the public.

_
A coloured gentleman, who is in the boot-blacking
business at Schenectady, publishes the following card :—" I
now possess unequalled facilities in the bootblacking pro-
fession, and employment in that line is respectfulty and
earnestly sdicited. Beside a boot that I have blackened
even 'old Sol' at pears at a disadvantage, and 'pole Luna'
grows black In the face. The splendour of my work is in
everybody's mouth, and I will be yet bootblack laureate to
the King of Siam."

NEWS! NEWS!! NEWS!!!

Q FIELD,
S.

WHOLESALE sc RETAIL NEWS AGENT,

92, Iliyh•atrret, Stourbridge.

DAILY Pon "AND " GAZETTE," 9d PEE DQE

Dealer in all kindsof Periodimils and NovepspeTs•