The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-09-19 00:00:00

SELECTED ANECDOTES.

MARRIAGE FORECASTING UNSIMPASSED.—Catherine
Tudor, at the funeral of her first husband (dohs
Salisbury), was led to church by Sir Richard Clough,
and from church by Morris Wynn, of Gwedir, who
whispered to her his wish of being her second. She
refused him civilly, and informed him that she had
accepted the proposals of Sir Richard Clough, on her
way to church, but assured him that if she buried Sir
Richard he might depend on being her third; which
really came to pass.

ALL 11IoonsI4nin.—Ibnugham one day, speaking
of the salary to be attached to a rumoured appoint-
ment of a new judgeship, said it was "all moonshine."
Lyndhurst, in his dry and waggish way remarked
"May be so, my LordlHarry ; but I've a confounded
strong notion that, moonshine though it be, you
would like to see the first quarter of it."

NECESSARY EVILS.—A gentleman was constantly in
the habit of calling his servants, before their faces,
" necessary evils." He quarrelled with one of them,
who left him in a rage, said he was sick of service,
and vowed that ha would never enter it again. A few
days after, his old master meeting him in a livery,
said, " Yoh ! you are gone into service again after
all!"—' Ah, sir, I have found that masters are
' necessary evils."

ENTRAORDTNARY LENGTH OF A TIGER.—Many years
ago, Mr. Richard Wilson, an eminent lawyer, and
member of the Beef Steak Club, one day called, at
the secretary's office in the India House, upon Cobb,
author of the "Siege of Belgrade," and many other
dramatic pieces, who happened for a few minutes to
be absent ; but on returning, whom should he see but
Dick, earnestly exploring a map of Asia, that was
suspended on the wall, measuring the scale of it with
a pair of compasses that he found on the table, and
then applying them to a large tiger, which the artist
had introduced to embellish it, as one of the animals
of that country. "By heavens, Cobb," exclaimed
Dick, "I should never have believed it ! Surely, it
must be a mistake? Observe now—here," pointing to
the tiger, "here is a tiger that measures two•and-
twenty leagues. It is scarcely credible !"

THE IRISHMAM AND THE JUDGE. —Shasta, California
being the head of " Wo-haw" navigation, the hotels in
this flourishing town were full to overflowing when
Judge B— arrived and asked the landlord for a room.
The landlord greatly regretted the fact, but "there
was but one opportunity even to sleep beneath his
roof, and that in a double bed, already occupied by a
'eon of the Emerald Isle'—a miner from a neigh.
bouring country, who was well acquainted with Judge
B— by reputation." The Judge, making a virtue of
necessity, agreed to sleep with Pat for the night, and
was shown into the room by Boniface, who waked Pat
and told him who was to be his bedfellow. Pat was
agreed. The landlord retired, and the judge com-
menced the double process of undressing and reminding
Pat of the great honour of which he was about to be
the recipient, and at the same time talking of the
" Ould Counthry," and preparing Pat to give to him,
the Judge, his support at the coming election. Con-
versing for some time after getting into bed, said the
Judge: "Pat, you would have remained a long time
in the old country before you could have slept with a
Judge, would you not?' —"Yes yer Honour," said
Pat, "and I think yer Honour would have been along
time in the Ould Connthry' before ye'd been a Judge,
too 1"

OLDEN TIME MANNERS.—Lady liolland once sent
her page round the table to Macaulay to tell him to
stop talking. She told Itogera, "Your poetry is bad
enough, so pray be sparing of your prose." At a
dinner in South-street, she fidgeted Lord Melbourne
so much by making him shift his place when he was
seated to his liking, that he rose, exclaiming, "I'll be
—if I dine with you at all !" and walked off to his own
house, fortunately at hand. She requested a celebrated
dandy to move a little farther IS, on the Found that
her olfactory nerves were offended by his blaoking ;
the blacking which he vowed was diluted with cham-
pagne. Shortly after M. Van de Weyer's arrival in
England as the Belgian Minister, he was dining with
distinguished party at Holland House, when Lady
Holland suddenly turned to him and asked, "How is
Leopald ?" "Does your ladyship mean the King of
the Belgians?" "I have heard," she rejoined, "of
Flemings, Hainaulters, and Brabanters ; but Belgians
are new to me." His reply was, "My lady, before!
had the honour to be presented to you, I had often
heard you spoken of not only as a woman of intelligence
and wit, but as a woman who had read much. Well
is it possible that you in your many readings have
never met the book by a person named Julius Cmsar,
who, in his Commentaries, gives to our nation the
name of the Belgians, and this name we have preserved
till our &ye?"
FRENCH DIFFICULTIES WITH ENGLISH IDIOMS.—A
Frenchman thus gives his experience of English baths:
—"I go; it is not a very nice place; small, and,!
think, not very clean; but I go in. I say to a man
there, 'I want a bath.'—'Yes, sir ; what eat, sir ? ' I
look at him. Mon Dieu, I think how foolish is this
man. I say, 'No, thank you; not now;
'What eat, sir? what eat ? ' I begin to get rather angry.
I did not think the English so barbaric a people to eat
just before the bath. In France we eat aftair the
bath. It is bad, it derange the stomach to go in hot
water aftair one has eaten. The man turned red,
angry, I think; he say some rude word. Then he
come back with a thermometair in his hand ; he calls
out loud enough to make me deaf, 'What eat for your
bath, sir? Show with your fingare ! ' "

A CALIFORNIAN ON CALIFORNIA.—The nature of
the country lately visited by Mr. Johnson, author of
Very Far West Indeed, may be best illustrated by the
remark of a Californian on his first glimpse of the
coast. All that was to be seen on the shores of the
harbour, where the newcomers expected to find the
capital of Vancouver's Island, was a knot of some
dozen log-huts, with a larger building, from which
floated the flag of the Hudson's Bay Company. The
letters " 11.11. C." on this flag attracted the attention of
some of the passengers, and the Californian was asked
to explain the meaning. After some consideration,
he slowly replied " Le'ss see-- B. C.' in ancient
history means 'Before Christ,' I b'lieve ; tharfore I
calliate H. B. C.' to mean 'Here before Chtist ; for
this tarried location dodt 'pear to 've bin much overrun
With strangers since that period."
THE TEACHING OF GRAMMAR NOT ALLOWETL—"
have been sendin' my darter Nancy to skool, and last
Friday I went over to the skool to see how she %TM
gettin' along,and I seed things I didn't like by no means.
The skoolmaater was larnin her things entirely out of the
line of eddycation, and, as I think, improper. I setawhile
in the skoolliouse, an' heerd one clans say their lesson.
The lesson that Nancy sed was nuthin' but foolshest
kind of talk; the reclicliat word she tied was I love.'
I looked right at her for being so improper, but she
went right on, and sed, ' thou lovest and he loves.'
And I reckon you never heard such rigmarole in your
life—love, love, love, and nuthin' but love. She serf
one time, 'I did love' Sez I, Who did you love
The skolars batted, but I wasn't to be put of, and sed,
'Who did you love, Nancy?' The skoolnukater aed he
would explain when Nancy had finished the lesson.
This sorter pacyfied me, and Nancy went on with her
awful love talk. It got woo and woo every word.
She sed, 'I might, could, or would love' I stopped
her again, and sed I reckon I would see about that,
and told her to walk out of that house. The skool-
master tried to interfere, but I would not let him say
a word. He said I was a fool, and I nokt him down
and made him holler in short order. I talkt the strafe
thing to him. I told him I'd show how hede learn my
darter grammar. I got the 'labors together, and we
sent him off in a hurry, and I reckon than be no more
grammar Machin' in these parts soon."