The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-02-06 00:00:00

CUTTINGS PROM AMERICAN PAPERS

Benjamin Franklin used to spell soap " s-o-p-e,
and yet there isn't a day but that someone holds him up as
a great philosopher and a good man.

- -
Among the lawyers recently assembled to attend a
superior court in Georgia were no less than eighteen
"colonels."

The last refuge of the impecunious i,s to go west in
an emigrant train and fall heir to immense estates in Eng-
land..

The wave on which many a poor fellow has been
carried away is the wave of a lace-edged cambric handker-
chief.

-----
An American contractor heard with disgust that
cities in China have streets paved with granite blocks which
were laid over three hundred years ago, and are as good as
new. "There's one good thing about it, though," he said,
brightening up; "the fellows that laid them pavements are
dead, I reckon, anyhow."
The St. Joseph (Mo.) Un;on says :—" They have a
new way of making morning calls at Kansas City. The driver
stops in front of a house, and if there is no response hurls a
brick through the window."

A young Lady makes Shaksepeare say, "An eye like
ma's, to threaten and command."

A Western paper, describing a duel, informs its
readers that one of the parties "was severely wounded in
breast, while his opponent fired in the air."

. - -
An hotel-keeper at a station on the Central Pacific
Railroad is said to call his guests to dinner by discharging
one barrel of a double-barrelled shot-gun. He reserves the
other barrel to collect with.

A candidate for county clerk in Texas offered to
register marriages for nothing. Ills opponent, undismayed,
promised to do the same, and "throw a cradle in."

-
A man at Cannelton has been granted a divorce
from his wife because she wasn't as plump as she made her
self appear.

- -
Two superb ball dresses, valued at $BOO each, were
re3ently seized on board a steamer from Europe, by the New
York Custon House officers. In the folds of the dress were
three dozen pairs of kid gloves.

Sensitive bather to -bathing attendant: "Listen, if
I am to be drowned, or nearly so, I want it to be distinctly
understood that I am not to be stood on my head, or rolled
on a barrel, or any such ridiculous exhibitions made of me.
If I can't be revived without any of these performances, I
prefer to be left alone."

When a dead man is spoken of as "the late Mr.
Smith," the inference is that he did not die early enough.
An American paper gives the following :—" In
Tennessee, a snake which measured several feet in length
was killed while caught in the crack of a fence, -half its body
being on each side. Examination developed that the snake
had swallowed a rabbit before it had attempted to crawl
through the crack, and that after its body was half through
the crack it caught and swallowed another rabbit, thus
having a rabbit on each side of the fence. The rabbits could
not get through the crack, which was unfortunate for the
snake as it cost him his life."

It is said that the following burlesque sentences about
Women's Rights come from Tasmania :—"I am here to-day
for the purpose of discussing women's rights, recussing her
wrongs, and cussing the men. I believe the sexes were
created perfectly equal, with the woman a little more equal
than the man. Man is a failure, and I bless my stars my
mother was a woman. I not only maintain these principles,
but I maintain a husband besides. What we want is the
franchise, and the franchise we are bound to have, if even we
have to swim in a sea of gore."

A HINT TO LECTURERS.—A lecturer made his delnit
in St. Louis recently, and began by stating that he had
caused the doors to be locked so that no one could escape
he had finished.