The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle. — 1876-10-07 (Stourbridge, West Midlands, England)

AMERICAN HUMOUR.  A Misscuri woman won a house and garden '.lll' a rsffi3, and then she had to buy a rifle to keep her adorers from wtaring out the steps. A Georgia newspaper informed its readers that it was not worth while for them to raise boys. The agonized editor insists that he wrote the word hogs. A Western paper tells us that a favourite hotel is to be kept next season at one of the watering-places "by the widow ef Mr. Smithers, who died last summer on a new and improved plan." What disagreeable person was it that said the national tune of America was the spittoon?  Outside of the hall where the meetings have been held for revlsirg spelling, some one has posted The Fillerdelfler. Convenshun for revising the spelling of the Eenglish landwidge haz ajerned. A Saratoga girl writes home :—" There are plenty of males here—lisping, silly, hair-patterbin-middle swells; but 0, for the sight of a genuine man!" This sign is displayed at a dining room on the East Side, New York, "Lunch 76 cents, !square meal 1 dollar, perfect gorge 1 dollar 25 cents."  A justice of the peace at Red Wing, Minnesota, had to knock a culprit down with a chair to get him quiet enough to try him. A man in Cincinnati recently "went out" ("query, committed suicide "), liKcause he lived next doer to an amateur trombone player. The coroner held an inquest, and returned a verdict of tromboned." A Yankee editor says, "If the party who plays the accordion in this vicinity at nights will bnly change his tune occasionally, or sit where we can scald him when the engine has steam on, he will hear of smelling to his advantage." The creditors of an absconded New York banker found, on opening his safe, that the only thing he had laid up for a rainy day wavau umbrella.  tits tune  A farmer, the other day, wrote to a New York merchant, asking how the former's son was getting aln, and where he slept nights. The merchant replied, "He sleeps In the store in the daytime. I don't know where he sleeps nights." An Atlanta man walked around all day recently with a grasshopper in his ear. When his wife discovered it, he said he had been hearing peculiar noises all day, but thought a new steam sawmill had begun operations somewhere In the neighbourhood.  If the money which our young men throw away every day for cigars were devoted to charity, every man, woman, and child, in this town, could have ice•cream for supper, and the stomach-ache and three kinds of cholera medicine before morning.  A fashion note in an exchange tells us that slinkiness in white dresses is not fashionable. We always felt certain of It, even before we saw the item, and now our belief will be fully confirmed as moon as we learn what slinkiness is.  "It has been demonstrated that a balloonist cannot drink from a jag after rising above the clouds." And now a Kentucky edieor won't go up until he is permitted to fill himself up to the chin before starting. A self-possessed young man called at a house in New York, a few mornings ago, and askrel to see his wife. "She is not here," replied the mistress of the houee. "There is none here but the members or my own family."—" Well," replied he, "It's one of-them I want to see. I married your eldest daughter yesterday." A New York paper says a former principal of Middleborough Academy. at one time, on the approach of a tempest, insulated a chair on four pieces of glass, and, as he thought, politely invited a young lady to sit on his lap for safety. To show the popularity of the man of letters, the young lady replied she had rather be struck by lightning. An old lady, livirg in New York, put her head out of the window during a storm, and was struclt by lightning. Sheowas stunned fora moment, and had the top of her head singed, but she recovered. She says if the "had only seen the lightning a minute sooner she would have elocl,ged it, but somehow she ain't so spry as she was eixty years ago.  A New York woman unoatentatiously points to the fact that the funeral of her late husband cost but eighty-two dollars, which is fifteen dollars less than the neighbours thought she could do it for, and yet there is not one of them who can say that anything was spared to make the occasion a success, and one long to be remembered by all who participated.