The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle. — 1876-02-26 (Stourbridge, West Midlands, England)

AMERICAN HUMOUR.  The women who have hen admitted to the Agri• cultural college in Michigan are said to behave in a very gentlentan?y manner.  A Missouri orator, hearing the sound of a coming locomotive., exclaimed, "Tis the sound of the tread of ages —the noise of the footfall of destiny!"  " It is my b•saness to_ sound the trumpet of patriotism," re,tently said a Yankee speaker. "That's no excuse for so constantly blawing your own horn !" exclaimed one of his auditors.  An American editor recently wrote :—" We cannot tell a lie. It was cold yesterday." A rival litterateur at once laid hold.of the remark, and commented thus :—" The latter statement is incontrovertible, but the former?"  A woman may not have so much hair as a comet, nor so many belts as a Jupiter, but she stands at the head of the mysteries of the universe.  "The first step towards wealth," says an exchange, "is the choice of a good wife." "And the first step towards securing a good wife is the possession of good wealth," says another. Here we have one ol those good rules which work prettily both ways.  "Although I've stood where shot fell around me like rain drops in a shower, I was unharmed." "Ah 1 what battles were you in 1' asked a curious stranger. The stranger soberly replied: 4.! It was in the shot tower." A New York editor, having twitted an editor in a neighbouring city, of being bald, subsequently apologized, and explained that, "as long as Mr. Smith can fold his ears over the tep of his head, he doesn't need any hair, anyhow."  Macaulay could repeat all Demosthenes by heart, all Milton, a great part of the Bible in English and the New Testament in Greek. He took great delight in the Bible, and there were few better biblical scholars than he. And yet he couldn't shovel the snow off a side-walk without putting his foot in it.  A Yankee reporter is terrifically "graphic" in describing the recent collision of railroad trains in Missouri Hear him:—" The two engines rushed at each other like malign and enraged monsters, grappled with a tremendous crash, reared from the track in a mortal wrestle, and fell into helpless and disjointed fragments on the ground." "Administering lead through a tube" is what the papers call it in Michigan when one person shoots another. The editors are very careful not to hurt a persan's feelings by alluding to "murder," or anything of that kind, for fenr they may have lead administered through a tube to their own persons.  A member of Congress from the West, who set out to visit his family early in January, and who has just got back to Washington, after much delay occasioned by the snowstorms, on his arrival was heard to declare, with official solemnity, that either the railroads must make better time, or else the whisky bottles must be enlarged, as a man's flask didn't begin to hold out for a trip nowadays.  A stump orator out West, wishing to describe his opponent as a soulless man, did it in this wise. "1 have heard,'' said Le, "some persons hold to the opinion that, just at the precise instant after one human being dies, another is born, and that the soul of the deceased enters and animates the new-born babe. Now I have made particular and extensive inquiries concerning my opponent thar, and I find that for some hours previous to his nativity nobody died."