The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-12-27 00:00:00

CUTTINGS FROM AMERICAN PAPERS.

Reply of a New York poet to a traveller from a
bookseller: "What do I want with your encyclopm iht ? I
couldn't ride one if I bad it 1 I have tried every kind of
velocipede, air."
A little six year Chicago boy astonished his mother
by exclaiming, "1 with I was an angel I" Wondering what
holy thoughts were filling his young mind she waited for a
reason. "Then I could see all the circuses at once."
A traveller passing throagh Weston, near Bridge.
water, in the State of Georgia, seeing a sign over the door
with this one word. " Agorsequrdere," he called to the
woman to Inquire what she sold, when she said that she
did not sell anything, but that "Agnes was cured here."

A Yankee paper says that an inventive genius in
Minnesota has just "got up a stove which saves three-
fourths of the wood, while the ashes it makes pay for the
remainder.

"Now, then, my hearties," said a gallant Yankee
captain, seeing that his men were likely to be out numbered
in a skitmish with the Indians, "you have a tough battle
before you. Fight like heroes till your powder's gone—then
run I'm a little lame and I'll start now." _

" Pompey," said a good-natured gentleman to his
coloured man' " I did not know till to-day that you had been
whipped last week." "Didn't you, mans ?" replied
Pompey; "I know'd it at de time."

A Michigan piper says that in a certain village in
that state so many people have the ague, that the church
bell is rung at specitled hours for the inhabitants to take
their quinine.

'1 know a victim to tobacco," said A Chicago
lecturer, 'who hasn't tasted food for nearly thirty years."
"how do you know he hasn't?' asked an auditor. "Be-
cause tobacco killed him in 1850," was the reply."

A. western editnr returned a tailor's bill endorsed,
"Declined ; hand. writing illegible."
" What one girl can do" is the subject of a recent
magazine article. But we needn't read it to learn what one
girl can do. The field is so broal that she can do most any-
thing. from absorbing sweets to squeezing a number three
shoe on to a number seven foot. Just to show what one girl
can do, we might mention the fact that a Massachusztts girl
eloped last week, was divorced, remarried, and returned
borne with her second husband, ad all in less than three
days. No, reader, you can tell what one girl can do, and
the field of woman's action is daily becoming larger.

A merchant doing bwinesa near the foot of Jeffer-
son Avenue used to sp-nd about half his time explaining to
callers why be could not sign petitions, lend small sums, buy
books, or invest in moonshine enterprises, but that time
has passed, and it now takes him only two minutes to get
rid of the most persistent case. Yesterday a man called to
sell him a map of Michigan. He had scarcely made known
his erraud when the merchant put on his hat and said :
"Come along and I'll see about it." He led the way
to a boiler shop, two blocks distant, wherein a hundred
hammers were pounding at iron, and walking up to the
centre of the shop and into the midst of the deafening
racket he turned to the agent and kindly shouted :—" Now,
then, it you know of any special reasons why I should pur-
chase a map of Michigan please state them at length." The
man with the maps want right out without attempting to
state "reason the one," and the merchant tranquilly re-
turned to his desk to await the next.

In the Lower House of the Prussian Diet the
Minister of Finance, in reply to a question, stated that in Silesia
the desti.ution had recently increased, and that 80,000
people sere in extreme want. Ihe diatress was mainly due
to a bad harvest and disastrous illods, and had been
rendered more severe by a hard winter, typhus fever, and
ustry.
There were 57 British and foreign wrecks reported
during the past week, making a total of 1,616 for the present
year, or an increase of 89 as compared with the correspond-
ing period of last year.
The following authentic utterance of Lord Beaoons•
fled is an interesting contribution to the discussion con-
cerning a Dissolution. Some members of the Conservative
party recently urged him, it Is stated, to dissolve soon, and
it was in reply to them that he said, "I see no reason for
dieenlving. I can never again count upon having a majority
of seventy, and I shall never have so good an Opposition."