The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-02-26 00:00:00

-

AMERICAN HUMOUR.

The women who have hen admitted to the Agri•
cultural college in Michigan are said to behave in a very
gentlentan?y manner.

A Missouri orator, hearing the sound of a coming
locomotive., exclaimed, "Tis the sound of the tread of ages
—the noise of the footfall of destiny!"

" It is my b•saness to_ sound the trumpet of patriot-
ism," re,tently said a Yankee speaker. "That's no excuse
for so constantly blawing your own horn !" exclaimed one of
his auditors.

An American editor recently wrote :—" We cannot
tell a lie. It was cold yesterday." A rival litterateur at
once laid hold.of the remark, and commented thus :—" The
latter statement is incontrovertible, but the former?"

A woman may not have so much hair as a comet, nor
so many belts as a Jupiter, but she stands at the head of the
mysteries of the universe.

"The first step towards wealth," says an exchange,
"is the choice of a good wife." "And the first step towards
securing a good wife is the possession of good wealth," says
another. Here we have one ol those good rules which work
prettily both ways.

"Although I've stood where shot fell around me like
rain drops in a shower, I was unharmed." "Ah 1 what
battles were you in 1' asked a curious stranger. The stranger
soberly replied: 4.! It was in the shot tower."
A New York editor, having twitted an editor in a
neighbouring city, of being bald, subsequently apologized,
and explained that, "as long as Mr. Smith can fold his
ears over the tep of his head, he doesn't need any hair,
anyhow."

Macaulay could repeat all Demosthenes by heart,
all Milton, a great part of the Bible in English and the New
Testament in Greek. He took great delight in the Bible, and
there were few better biblical scholars than he. And yet he
couldn't shovel the snow off a side-walk without putting his
foot in it.

A Yankee reporter is terrifically "graphic" in des-
cribing the recent collision of railroad trains in Missouri
Hear him:—" The two engines rushed at each other like
malign and enraged monsters, grappled with a tremendous
crash, reared from the track in a mortal wrestle, and fell into
helpless and disjointed fragments on the ground."
"Administering lead through a tube" is what the
papers call it in Michigan when one person shoots another.
The editors are very careful not to hurt a persan's feelings
by alluding to "murder," or anything of that kind, for fenr
they may have lead administered through a tube to their
own persons.

A member of Congress from the West, who set out
to visit his family early in January, and who has just got
back to Washington, after much delay occasioned by the
snowstorms, on his arrival was heard to declare, with official
solemnity, that either the railroads must make better time,
or else the whisky bottles must be enlarged, as a man's flask
didn't begin to hold out for a trip nowadays.

A stump orator out West, wishing to describe his
opponent as a soulless man, did it in this wise. "1 have
heard,'' said Le, "some persons hold to the opinion that, just
at the precise instant after one human being dies, another
is born, and that the soul of the deceased enters and animates
the new-born babe. Now I have made particular and ex-
tensive inquiries concerning my opponent thar, and I find
that for some hours previous to his nativity nobody died."