The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle. — 1876-06-03 (Stourbridge, West Midlands, England)

AMERICAN HUMOUR.  44 A Nashville man has succeeded in raising some very fine bananas—from the cellar of a fruit-dealer, and says the climate of the country seems well adapted to this fruit. A Chicago editor, who went out for a day's sport with the gun and rod, shot a forty-five dollar cow, and caught an old hat with a stone in it. A New York man has christened his daughter Glycerine. He says it will be easy to prefix nitro if her temper resembles her mother's. Immense footprints were recently found about a house on Laurel Hill, and it is thought some Windham County girls were trying to commit a burglary there during the night. Men, says Adam Smith, are naturally unsentimental. A man will scoop the inside out of an egg without thinking that the mother of that egg is perhaps a hundred miles away, in the rain. A Florida paper has ascertained that a healthy alligator can eat seven negro children in the course of seven . hours and not display any symptoms of disquiet. A Tennessee-girl, riding on the cars, crossed the aisle, kicked a young man up against the window, and remarked: "I was brung up never to allow a yaller-eyed man to wink at me." It is rumoured that only one man in sixty knows how to gracefully slant himself against a lamp-post and blow up a street-car for not teing in time. A New York lady was examining an applicant for the office of maid-of-ail-work, when she interrogated her as follows "Well, Mail, can you scour tin-ware with alacrity r —" No, ma'am; I always scour it with sand." • Lightning recently struck a telgraph pole and ran along the wire into the office at Coatsvllle, Indiana, when the clerk seated at the instrument excitedly telegraphed back, "Don't send so fast I" A young married man, of New York, does not believe "a thing of beauty is a joy for ever." He says the author of that statement ought to see his pretty wife when she's "got her dander up." A Nebraska man, on his dying bed, remembered that his wife was smoking some hams, and he said, "Now, Henrietta, don't go whimpering about and forget them hams " It is said that Booth broke his leg for an aAvertisement, and the plan has worked very nicely. We trust that his success may induce some others to break their  necks. A skating rink accident is thus described by a reporter: "She strack out; couldn't turn • started for the ceiling; shouted, Don't you look ' ; turned, gave a spring, and then sat violently down. The stripes were brown and red, and well filled." A young Kentucky barrister lately made his maiden' speech in defence of a man charged wfth stealing. "Gentlemen of thej ury," he wound up, "my client is no more guilty of stealing than a frog that ain't got no tail,. I thank y, your attention." An Ohio gawkey saw, for the first time, a schoolgirl going through some of her gymnastic exercises for the amusement of the little ones at home. After gazing at her with looks of interest and commiser3.tion for a while, he asked a boy near by "if that gal had fits "—" No," replied the lad, contemptuously; "that's gymnastics."—" Oh, 'his, hey? "said the verdant; "how long has she had 'ern I ' • During the late gale at Nova Scotia, a barber took stroll to witness the destruction in process, and, while contemplating the ravages of the storm, some one came running up to him, and exclaimed, "You have more need to be at home; your shop's blown down 1"—" Good man," coolly replied the barber, "how can that be, when I've got the key in my pocket Y.' A New York paper gravely observes that the suicide of a farmer, which it notices, "is singularly strange, inasmuch as he has not been in the habil. of doing such things." An incident in the life of a Yankee farmer is thus recorded. His wile was taken very ill, and he was called away on urgent business. During his absence she died and was buried, and the news was delicately conveyed to him by a boy, who met him at the gate The boy said, "Mr. Jones, your old woman is dead and buried, and we've got in the the spring oats." " Good heavens !" said the shocked man; "and the oats in."  ou foi