The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-03-11 00:00:00

AMERICAN HUMOUR.

A "Down East" Yankee has recently invented a
rat exterminator, consisting of a sort of powder-snuff. The
animal jerks his head off at the third sneeze!
A Chicago paper has the following :—" Brief
Chronicle.—Saturday. Two little boys and a pistoL Now,
only one little boy and a pistoL"
"Among all my boys," said an old man, "I never
had but one who took after me, and that was my son Aaron;
he took after me with a club."
Mr. Blogg says he was knocked almost flat the other
day by suddenly reflecting that nearly all the pretty girls are
but incipient mothers-in-law.
Uncle Solomon says he has noticed, all through his
life, how ready people are, when they have made a mistake,
to correct it—by abusing somebody else for it.
It is good ground for divorce in St. Louis if a wife
finds one hundred and thirteen love-letters in her husband's
pocket.
Vermont clergymen are never permitted to kiss the
ladies they have just made brides. The dear creatures put
up their hands, with the remark, "There, that'll do; I've
seen you fellows afore."
As an evidence that the black race cannot be civi-
lised, a Georgia paper mentions the case of a negro who
returned a one-hundred-dollar-note which a bank overpaid
him
A young lady in Ohio, in writing to a friend, says :
"I am not engaged, as you insinuate, but I must confess
that I see a cloud above my domestic horizon about as big as
a man's hand."
There is an inscription on aiktombstone at La Point,
Lake Superior, which reads as follows :—" John Smith, ac-
cidentally shot as a mark of affection by his brother."

"Yes, sir," remarked a red-nosed patriot, as he
leaned one elbow on the whisky-bar, and crooked the other
at just the angle to bring the rim of the empty glass to his
nose, "yes, sir, our country never had before the need of
such exalted statesmanship as in the present emer---" just
then somebody asked him to have another drink, and he for-
got to finish the sentence.
A young gentleman in New York lately made an
evening call upon a young lady, and got rather shabbily
treated. It was getting along towards nine o'clock, when
the 3"oung lady inquired the time of evening. "Five minutes
to nine," was the reply.—" flow long will it take you to go
home?"—" Five minutes, I should judge."—" Then," said
the young lady, "if you start now, you will get house at just
nine o'clock." -

- -----
The late Judge Pease, of the Supreme Court, Ohio,
was a noted wag. A young lawyer was once making his first
effort before him, and having thrown himself on the wings of
his imagination into the seventh heaven, was preparing for
a still higher ascent, when the judge struck his ruler on the
desk two or three times, and exclaimed to the astonished
orator: "Hold on, hold on, my dear sir! Don't go any
higher; for you are already out of the jurisaiction of this
court.'
There is said to be "a leading citizen" in a Massa-
chusetts town, who, after having heard the church com-
mittee discuss whether it was best to have two or three
aisles in their new church, broke in with—" Wil, you may
talk about your new kinds of tie as much as you're a mind
to, but I never yet see any tie or gas that is as good as the
old-fashioned lamp lie."
When a man (says a New York journal) comes home
and tries to bolt his door with a sweet potatoe, pokes the
fire with the spout of a coffee-pot, attempts to wind up the
clock with a boot-jack, tries to cut wood for his morning fire
with a penknife, takes a cold potato in hand to light him to
bed, and prefers sleeping in his hat and boots, you may
reasonably infer that he has been making the acquaintance
of Come very Wend": People.