The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-04-12 00:00:00

CUTTINGS FROM AMERICAN PAPERS.

Reporters are often unconsciously satirical. A
morning paper says in an obituary : "Mr. was an
estimable citizen. He lived uprightly !he died with perfect
resignation—he had been recently married."

"Opportunity makes the thief." "Not in our case ; "
said a downeast editor. "We found a big anchor and chain
on the pavement the other night, and we didn't t )uch it;
there was nobody about either."

An lowa paper having inserted a paragraph relating
that a woman of that State had helped her husband to raise
seventy acres of wheat, and noticing the news, 'copied by
its contemporaries tinder an evident misapprehension of
facts, now explains that the way she helped was to stand in
the door, and shake a broom at him when he sat down to
rest, and terrifying him in other ways.

At a poliee-station-house in one of the towns of the
state of Missouri they have a "Welcome' motto over the
entrance to the cells, thus making it pleasant and homelike
for the occupants.

"I never can enjoy poetry when I'm cookini said
an old lady; "but when I step out to feed the hogs,
and h'ist myself on the fence and throw myself into a few
lines of Cap'n Jinks, it does seem as if this airth was made to
live on after all."

Under the head of "Crimes and Casualties," a
rural paper mentions the fact that a rival editor has just
published a book.

A woman in Omaha was choked almost to death and
entirely destroyed her power of speech for an hour the other
day by swallowing a boot-button. We have said a thousand
times that some serious trouble would yet come out of this
custom of Omaha women unbuttoning their shoes with their
teeth.

"The Price She Paid " is the title of a new novel.
We don't know what the article was, but it is safe to say if
she bought it at an auction, and another woman there was
desirous of becoming the owner also, the price she paid was
more than four times as much as it was worth.

The American after-dinner orator will soon be able
to say :—" Speaking the same language, glorifying in the
same literature, of the same blood, and subject to the same
potato beetle, &c."
This is the way they play billiards in New York
according to a reporter who attended the recent tourna-
ment :—" The globes crept along with a soft musical click,
and, amid the cheers of the assemblage, crossed to the
bottom rail, rambling leisurely on their way like two chil-
dren wandering in a country lane, who sometimes separate
to pick sweet flowers by the wayside and run back to meet
each other with a kiss."

Out in Oregon, there is a lady lawyer. She is, or
was, married. And the other day a client went to her
office and found the door locked, with the following notice
pinned on the outside :—" Gone to my husband's funeral.
Back in thirty minutes."
A Duluth (Wisconsin) paper says, "A wolf strayed
into our Union Church last Sabbath, during service, and
was so overcome by an ounce of lead that was presented to
him that he was unable to leave."

"We find that he came to his death by calling Joe
Brown a liar," was the verdict of a coroner's Jury in
Arkansas.

A Dutch farmer thus writes to the chairman of the
Massachusetts Agricultural Society :—"Gentlemen,—Please
to put me down on your list of cattle for a bull."
A chaplain of a prison, an enthusiastic devotee to
the temperance reform, had the idea that most of the con-
victs were incarcerated because of the use of whisky. In
his round he met a sturdy man of many stripes, and pus
the usual question to him. "Had whisky anything to do
with bringing you here?'— Everything, sir, everything,"
exclaimed the man. The chaplain was encouraged, and
eagerly inquired how it was.—" Well, sir, ill tell you how
it was. The judge was drunk, and the lawyers were all
drunk, and they brought me in guilty."
At a recent trial of a liquor case in New York, the
witness on the stand was under examination as to what he
had seen in defendant's domicile, which he said he had
visited "a number of times." "Did you ever see any spirits
there, or anything you regarded as spirits?" asked the
presiding justice. "Why. yes—l don't know but I have,"
was the reply of the witness. "Do you know what kind of
spirits ? " " Yes" "How do you know ?" "1 'melt it."
"Well now," said the judge, straightening himself for the
convicting answer, which he supposed would be given, wiu
you please tell me what kind of spirts it was?" Spirits of
turpentine !" "Get down" roared the judge.