The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-11-30 00:00:00

CUTTINGS FROM AMERICAN PAPERS.

Children ask some curious questions. A little boy
came home from Sabbath-school one day, and meeting his
mother, the following dialogue took plive :—" Mamma 1"
" Well, my dear?"—" Mamma, the teacher says people are
all made of dust ? "—" Yes, my dear, so the Bilme says,"—
"Well, mamma, are all white people made of dust? "
" Yes. '—" Well, then I s'pose black people are made qf
coal-dust, ain't they 1"

A. curious misprint appears in a recently published
volume of poems. The passage in which it occurs reads as
follows :

"Stagnant green,
Stewed with the bones of lovers that have been."
For "stewed" read "strewed."

A Yankee paper has the following unique criticism
upon a well•known prima donna:—" Her voice is wonderful.
She runs up and down the scale with the agility of an ex-
perienced cat running up and down a housetop and two or
three fences thrown in. She turns figurative flip•iiaps on
every bar, tearing up the thermometer to away above 212,
and sliding down again se far below zero that one feels
chilled to the bone."

A stranger called upon a farmer, in St. Ann's
County, Maryland, U.S.A., some years ago, and asked him 11
his house had been robbed during the war. The fanner re-
plied that it had. "I," said the stranger, "was one of the
marauding party that did it. I took a silver locket."
"That locket," observed the farmer, "had been worn by my
dead dear child. "Here it is," said the stranger, visibly
affected. "I am rich; let me make restitution; here are
twenty dollars for your little son." He gave the farmer a
fifty dollar bill, and received thirty dollars in change. He
then wrung the farmer's hand warmly, and lett. The farmer
has since dried his tears, and loaded his shot gun. • The fifty
dollar bill was bad.

An American journal, discussing the much-troubled
currency question, plaintively observes :—" Political econo-
mists, senators, representatives, and statesmen, are for ever
trying to make money plentiful and cheap. But when a
modest and ingenious counterfeiter quietly steps in and
shows them how to do it, he is clapped into a penitentiary
for his pains."
" Oh, heavens, save my wife!" shouted a man
whose wife had fallen overboard in the Hudson River re-
cently. They sncoeeded in rescuing her. Her husband
tenderly embraced her, saying, "My dear, if you'd been lost
what should I have done? I shall not let you Oarry the
pocket book again."
A travelling insurance agent had been explaining to
a western pioneer the advantage of an insurance policy.
Pathfinder mused a moment in grave silence, and then
said, "See here, mister. I have lived out in this country
now for over twenty-five years, and I have bucked again inost
of the games they've started ; but darn me if I want to play at
a game where you have to die to beat the bank."
The testimony of the daughter of the parties to a
recent Indiana divorce snit seems conclusive: "Father got
mad because mother starched his stockings. Mother picked
up the stockings and hit father on the head with them, and
it sounded as if they were sticks of wood. Father then stuffed
a hot wheat cake down mother's throat, and then mother set
the dog on father, and twisted the dog's tail to make him
bite harder.

A weekly newspaper has just been started in
Louisiana, the editor of which thus introduces himself to the
public :—" Once more at the helm, we fear no storms, no
thunder, no billows. The winds may roar and surge, and in
wild, mad career upheave the political ocean until her dis-
coloured depths are seen and bear mountain height with wild
confusion the billows and the billows' spray. From cloud to
cloud the rending lightning may rage, until the heavens
appear one broad sheet of fire, and the torrents pour in un-
broken floods, a solid mass. The ocean may rage, and her
billows strive to reach the very heavens, yet, safely, proudly,
fearlessly will we steer our staunch, storm-tossed barque,
until we have anchored in the placid waters of the harbour
of Constitutional Liberty,"

A. Gnu( Jo—An American paper states that a
boy who was playing near a lire with benzine has not "ben
teen" since,