The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-04-15 00:00:00

AMERICAN RUMOUR.

An artist is not so strong as a horse, but he can draw
a larger object.
The Washington Chronicle wants to know how many
children the "mother-of-pearl 'had. Shell never tell.
A Cleveland druggist is named Whyborn. Nobody
knows.
A man who has travelled through New Jersey says
he saw some land there so poor that you couldn't raise a dis-
turbance on it. - - - -

'My onthankful hearers,' said a backwoods
preacher, "you air like onto hogs eatin' acorns. They never
look up to see where the acorns some from."
A. Chicago man has invented a bunk peculiarly suit-
able to railway travellers, as by a sim,le contrivance it may
be converteo into a coffin.

An itinerant preacher' in speaking against the re.
establishment of the death penalty in lowa, says that he
does not want his congregation tninned out too fast.
The maddest man in Chicago is Smith. He wound
up his clock regularly for fifteen years, and then discovered
that it was an e ght-day clock. He muses on the work that
be might li%ve done in those wasted minutes, and his pro-
fanity is dreadfuL

An American paper says a society has been formed
In New York—not before it is wanted—called the "Ladies'
Anti - ambitious - to - figure-in-the-ne wspapers-with-no-us eful-
results - and - to - the-neglect-of. your-own-domestic-duties So-
ciety."

The other day a countryman at Barnum's Museum
asked one of the men, "Where is the mummy ? " The latter
replied, "He is dead," and the inquirer passed on perfectly
satisfied, for he couldn't expect that even Barnum could
prevent an occasional death among his curiosities.
A Chicago political essayist once published an essay
entitled Does Protection Protect I The Cmcinnatti Inquirer,
treating of the detectives of Clncinnatti, asks, "Does
Detection Detect?" And now the Louisville Courier in.
squires, "Does Election Elect?" _

,
An old farmer said to his sons, "Boys, don't you
ever spekerlate, or wait for somethin' toturn up. You might
just as well go and sit down on kstone in the middle of the
medder with a pail 'twixt your legs, and wait for a cow to
backup to you to be milked."

The creditors of an absconding Yankee banker
round, on opening his safe, that the only thing he had laid up
for a rainy day was an umbrella.

A Danbnry boy is preparing for Congress. He is so
far gone as to have said in a debating club oration that "the
name of the late Charles Sumner will go crashing down the
centuries."

A somewhat illiterate woman having read in a poem
about a simoon that 'swept the plains," is urging her hus-
band to get one of them n ew-fangled things for her to use iu
the kitchen.

Some young ladies of Oswego who believe in making
use of their leap year privileges, have organtzed themselves
into a club, called the "Hair Pint" They recently gave a
party and each invitation to it was fastened with a hair pin.
A sheriff in Florida, who was called upon to resign,
wrote back Your communication is received, stating
that my resignation would meet with the approval of the
governor. It does not meet mine, and I shall not do it.
A young man at Niagara having been oisossed in
love. walked out to the precipice, took off his clothes, gave
one lingering look at the gulf beneath him, and then went
home. His body was found next morning In bed.
A new Texas paper announces its position, thus :
"In religion we are conservative, and we intend to adhere
to the cash system."
A female lecturer in Boston said :—" Get married,
young men, and be quick about it. Don't wait for the girls
to become angels. You would look well, beside an angel,
wouldn't you?'
The Danbury News thinks that "one of the most
pitiable sights in this life is the spectacle of a man who has
been married but three months wearing cotton in his ears."
—The same man wearing poker and broom-handle monograms
on his head is a much more pitiable, as well as pAnful,

npectacle. .
A Western orator, warming with bis subject ex-
claimed, "There is not a man, woman, or child, in this house,
who has arrived at the age of fifty years, but has felt this
truth thundering through their Millail for centuries 1"

A Connecticut woman was recently bereft of tbst
faculty of speech by being hit with a snowball, and many
married men in that part of the country have been heard to
remark that, after all, winter has advantages not afforded by
any other season.
An Illinois judge, on a recent trial of a forger, vhose
counsel set up A defence f insanity, said that if the offender
had merely signed another man's name to the chequo. his
defence of it:sanity naisht have beets held good but that his
drawing the money and spending it 'allowed him to be a,
saaacious and soundrainded man." The prisoner was con-
victed, _ _

How strange it is that railroad men will not mind
their own business! If they would only do so, how much
unhappiness they might prevent! A man, while riding on
the platform of an Ogdensburg and Rouse Point car, looked
out to see what town the train was approaching when his
hat blew off, and he was about to jump off after it, when the
brakeman seized and prevented him from carrying out his
rash intention. Ills wife witnessed the whole affair, and said
she wished brakemen would mind their own bueluess. It is
thought she doted on her lord.
The Spelling Bee is wanted in Cincinnati, as the
Times of that place gives some examples from personal
experience. A young lawyer left upon his door this mys-
terious legend, "Gone to hrextus." A aruggist was sur-
prised and disturbed to rece,ve from a se, vaut, " ?lease
give the bare something to thick him 16 cents worth." A
jury handed up to the judge a communication endorsed,
"To the onorable gug." The proprietor of a country store
received this note from one of his customers, " Mister,
Cream, Wunt you let my boay hey a pare of Easy shuz ?
"This house for cab," was the announcement nailed over
the door of a humble dwelling.

SUGGESTIVE RETUDIATION.—Lord Byron Willi once
asked by a friend in the green-room of the Drury Lane
Theatre, whether he did not think Miss Kelly's acting
In the "Maui and the Magpie" exceedingly natural.
"I really am no judge," answered his lordship, " I was
never innocent of stealing a spoon."

EPITOME OF .NEWS.