The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1869-12-11 00:00:00

HUMOROUS JOTTINGS.

A modern Noah in Portland has launched an ark
large enough for himself during the next flood, which he
predicts near at hand. He expects to land in Italy.
A Elle Buffalo girl wants to know if fleas are white
—because her uncle told her that " Mary had a little lamb,
with Hew as white as snow."
The American papers have after a week's weeding
among their efforts at fun, been have,
to contain the follow
ing pretty fair trifles—" Come in out of the wet!' said the
shark when he swallowed the boy." "Can a civil engineer
Inform us how it is that the mouths of rivers are larger than
their heads?" "Acti"n should follow thought. NO farmer
can plough a field by turning it over in his mind " "A
Chicago girl says that she don't get married for tie reason
that she don't know whose husband she might be marrying. •
The late Mr. Justice Hayes (as is well known) was
a wit. On the trial of a cause of "Woodcock r Bird," before
the late 'Lord Chief Justice Jervis, at Warwick, the Chief
Justice having remarked that it was a pity that two " Birds '
should not live in harmony, Hayes replied, '4 Yes, it is, my
loot; but my client complains of the length of the plaintiff's
bill."
The lady to whom M. Lesseps has just been mar-
ried was latterly known in Egypt as the "Rose of Sharon,'
In commemoration of the mode in which he asked for her
hand. Ile brought her a flower from Suez. Wu this flower
Nog twisted in the fingers by any one, It was understood •
bulb out and disci..e hi the metre of the blossom the
holder's future colleen. M de Lessem is related to have
given his lady-love this flower, asking her whom she saw in
its frail leaves. The lady very soon said, " You!" and so
the matter was settled.
Said a male advocate of woman's rights—" When I
am In a crowded car and a lady cemes in, I think it is the
duty of some other man to get up and give her his nest 1
look round the car to see if any man in the crowd looks like
making a move in that direction, and when I see them all
keep their seats, I hide my lace behind my newspaper, and
blush for my sex."
The Australians bid fair to rival the Yankees in
stfsoge advertisements. The following from Melbourne is
quoted in the new periodical Nature .—" The Physical Buda
of Life. I encley's celebrated essay on this subject is lectured
on daily by William Barton, who has made the matter a
life study. It Is also illustrated daily at his tables where the
pnysical basis can be laid in from eleven to three, in the best
cooked and most varied hot limchson in the city,"
Describing a new hotel in the Fifth Avenue, New
York, it is said .—" The waiters scout ineffable elegance, and
of an intellectual cast of countenance. They look like
graduates of Harvard. They wear two clean shirts and two
bite chokers a day, and change their aprons three times an
hour. A spot on a bosom or a crease in a tie involves instant
dismissal."
It seems that the idols of New York mammon.
worship, to which we recently alluded, have some heretics to
encounter even at the I own shrine. At the very hour when
the bronze memorial of Commodore Vanderbilt was being
unveiled, the Stock Exchange in Wall-street was the scene of
a burlesque of the performance. A grotesque statue was un-
veiled, and a broker delivered a facetious oration. interrupted
by the presentation of a huge bouquet of cabbages, which
was acknowledged with emotion hi the name of the " railroad