The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-05-01 00:00:00

CUTTINGS FROM AMERICAN PAPERS,

A Chicago gentleman who recently travelled through
Ohio, says that everybody he met called potatoes " taters,"
except one young lady, who called him a "small pertater."
A Rocky Mountain editor, alluding to the demand
for female suffrage, female doctors, and female clergymen,
remarks that anotlsisorwant presents itself—that of female
women. „

An article upon the human figure says that "the
proportiOns of the figure are six times the length of the feet."
Coming generations, when they shall excavate a Chicago
lady's shoe, will remark incontinently, ." There were giants
in those days," and mentally construct a race of women
ten feet tall.
The Hew Orleans Picayune states that the last
fashionable wrinkle takes the shape of embroidered trowsers
for piano legs.
A tourist with a desire for useful knowledge visited
the ruins of Pompeii. The cicerone explained to him the
manner in which the city perished. "At what date ?" he
asked. The cicerone en retrttite, reflected. "It must have
been Ash Wednesday," he said.

An uncophisticated maiden in Illinois has invented
a simple but ingenious device for securing by one operation
both a husband and a fortune. She offers herself as a prize
to be raffled for—one hundred thousand tickets to be issued
at one dollar each, reserving to herself the right to reject
the holder of the lucky number on payment of five hundred
dollars.

A Danbury young man who left on a Far Western
expedition .was bidding his friends good-bye at the depot,
when a young girl cried out, "Bring me 'the scalp of a Modoc,
won't you?" The young man, feeling a little hurt at her
indifference to his departure and the dangers he was about
to encounter, sadly replied, "No Emma; you should not
look for more hair until you have paid for that you now
wear." The remark appeared to subdue her.
An old coloured preacher was lecturing a youth
about the sin of dancing, when the latter protested that the
Bible plainly said, "There's a time to dance." "Yes, dar
am a time to dance," said the dark divine; "and it's when
boys get a whippin' for gwine to a ball."
A Boston gentleman who had been at great expense
to adorn his garden with statuary, was much chagrined
recently to hear an old man from the country say to his wife,
as they gazed upon the statues, " des see what a waste,
Belinda! Here's no less than six scarecrows in this ten-foot
patch, and any one of 'em would keep the crows from a five-
acre field."
A candidate for a teacher's position in San Fran-
cisco sent in the other day a remarkable examination paper.
She was asked to spell the following words and give their
definition: Vacillation, hieroglyphics, antediluvian,
aphorism, bivouac, codicil, hallucination, inveigle, peri-
phery. She spelled and defined them as follows :—" Vassila-
don, the act of being a vassil ; hyeroghyphics (correct de-
finition); antediluvian, the art of loosening down before, as
it were; ahphorism, a rising before hand; bivouac (was Un-
able to define) ; codissol, relating to a code, law, or rule;
hallusenation, a strange loosening or separation, as it were;
inveigle, somewhat strange, unnatural." Several others who
were examined spelled and defined some of the words as
follows :—"Superanuatea, the state of being over exerted;
biviouc, excitement, gayety ; coidicile (couldn't define);
perriffery (couldn't define) ; hallucination, act of rejoicing
or blessing; bivouac, American bush-fighting."