The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1884-04-12 00:00:00

CUTTINGS PROM AMERICAN PAPERS.

"I've lost a patient," said a doctor, sitting down to
a boarding-house dinner table, with a frown on his
face as dark as a gunpowder poultice. "I'm sorry to
hear it. Man or woman?" asked one of the boarders.
"Man." "When did he die ? " "Die, hang him,
he's not dead. He stopped taking my medicine, got
well, and ran away without paying the bill."
A Rhode island jury were five days debating on a
hog case involving 7 dols., and then came in, found
the hog not guilty, and recommended both plaintiff
and defendant to the mercy of the court.
The ladies of Pittsburg, if we may believe one of
their own papers, cannot keep their faces clean, in
consequence of the coal soot which is constantly fall-
ing in the American Birmingham. When a lady's
face receives a descending flake, her nearest friend
blows it off. To wipe it off would only make bad
worse; and tingular to say, the greatest kindness
shown by the ladies to each other is when they come
to blows!

A lady, who edits a newspaper in one of the
Western (American) States, says "that the popula-
lation of her journal is due to the fact that people
are always expecting she will say something she
ought not to."
A Philadelphia miss at Long Branch bothers the
young men to whom she is introduced by starting off
in this way, before they have a chance to say a word:
"Yes, it is awfully het. We came here last week.
We will stay two weeks more. We are at this hotel.
I like Long Branch. Now let's talk about something
else."

A young lady in Chicago, when asked by the
officiating minister, will you love, honour, and obey
this man as your husband, and be to him a true
wife? "said, plainly, "Yes, if he does what he pro-
mised me financially."
Mr. Krawl threw a lighted match down by a keg
of powder, as he entered his store in Davenport,
lowa, but the manner in which he came out was not
at all suggestive of his name.
An Arkansas man thoughtlessly set some spring
guns in his poultry-yard, and the next morning in the
rising sun he rubbed his spectacles and stared in
speechless amazement at eighteen candidates for
governor, sitting on the front fence, picking birdshot
out of their thirty-six legs.
Outside of a Philadelphia hall, where meetings
have been held for revising English spelling, there
were posted lately, "The Fillerdelfier Convenshun
for revising the spelling of the Eenglish landwidge has
adj erned.'
A New York publisher offered 1000 dols. for a story
that would make his hair stand on end. Many tried
for the money, but nobody got it, because the publisher
was
.totally..bald.

They call it a romantic marriage in Michigan when
n couple of the neighbours get the bride's father into
a back room and sit en him to prevent his interrupt-
ing and breaking up the wedding.
A drawing-master in Milwaukie who had been wor-
rying a pupil with contemptuous remarks about his
deficiency of skill in the use of the pencil, ended by
saying, "If you were to draw me, for example, tell
me what part you would draw first." The pupil, with
a significant meaning in his eye, looked up in his
master's face, and quietly said, "Your neck, sir."
A Mississippi doctor has found a substitute for
quinine. He binds a lump of ice on a patient's spine,
and the shakes let go and start for Arkansas.
Some men never lose their presence of mind. In
New York a man threw his mother-in-law out of a
window in the fifth story of a burning building, and
carried a feather bed downstairs in his arms.

A Missouri bride's father gave her a cook stove as
a wedding present; her mother, a carpet; herfather-
in-law, a china tea set; other friends, brooms, sacks
of flour, kitchen utensils, dining-room table; her
brother, a canoe; her uncle, a bird cage; her cousin,
a tame crow, and the bridegroom gave her a smack.
"These useful and domestic articles were all valued
above mere gewgaws," says the local paper.
"Will you please insert this obituary notice ?" asked
an old gentleman of an lowa editor, "I made bold to
ask it because the deceased had a great many friends
about_ here who'd be glad to hear of his death."
_ _ _

It kind of broke tip a temperance man from down
East when he went into the rooms of a Total Absti-
nence Club at Louisville to find the club believed in
total abstinence from water.

A short time since certain Eastern parties sent a
gentleman out to Dakota, Minnesota, and other
sections of the North-west to inspect the country,
investigate its resources, and prepare a report, so that
they could determine whether it was best to emigrate
thither. When he returned, a meeting was held, and
his report found very satisfactory. Just before
adjourning, a gentleman asked the agent about the
water out there. "Well, I declare," was the reply,
"I knew there was something I had forgotten! I
never tasted water while I was away 1"
A member of Congress from the Far West, who
was invited to a dinner at Washington, is now telling
his constituents all about it. "There wasn't any-
thing on the table when I got there," he says, "but
some forks and spoons and bricky-brac. Presently
they brought in some soup. As I didn't see nothin'
else, I thought I'd eat all the soup I could, though
soup is a mighty poor dinuer to invite a feller to. So
I was helped four times; and then came on the finest
dinner I ever see, and there I set," groans he, "choke-
full of soup!"
A Virginia widow refused to marry a bald-headed
man, though he was a millionaire. She explained:
"We'd have a family fight some time, and he has no
hair to catch hold of."
In Wisconsin, when they want to find out if a girl
is courting or not, an old lady steps in and remarks:
"I say, there ain't no one sick in this here house or
nothin', is there? I seen a light burnin' nigh on to
twelve o'clock last night; but I don't smell no camphire
nor nothin' around.'

A hoosier at dinner on a Mississippi palatial
steamer was about to reach out for something before
him, but the waiter, checking him, exclaimed: "That,
sir, is a desert." "0," said the hoosier, "I don't care
if it's a wilderness. I'm going to eat it all the same."

EMPIIATIC.—This is the way in which a Western
girl disposes of a young man. She says, "You have
asked me pointedly if I could marry you, and I have
tnswered you pointedly that I can. I can marry a
man who makes love to a different girl every month.
I can marry a man whose main occupation seems to be
to join in a gauntlet in front of churches and theatres,
and comment audibly upon the people who are com-
pelled to pass through it. I can marry a man whose
only support is an aged father. I can marry a man
who boasts that any girl can be won with the help of
a good tailor and an expert tongue. I can marry
mach a man, but I WON'T 1"

A.URDAY, APRIL 12, 1884