_More Truth than Poetry._--The following conversation between a colored
prisoner and a temperance lecturer who was in search of facts to fortify
his positions and illustrate his subject, explains itself:--
"What brought you to prison, my colored friend?"
"Two constables, sah."
"Yes; but I mean, had intemperance anything to do with it?"
"Yes, sah; dey wuz bofe uv 'em drunk, sah."
* * * * *
_Humble Pie._--The humble pie of former times was a pie made out of the
"umbles" or entrails of the deer; a dish of the second table, inferior, of
course, to the venison pastry which smoked upon the dais, and therefore
not inexpressive of that humiliation which the term "eating humble pie"
now painfully describes. The "umbles" of the deer are usually the
perquisites of the gamekeeper.
* * * * *
_Increase of Insanity._--Insanity in England is rapidly increasing. In
1861, when the population was 19,860,701, there were 36,702 lunatics,
being nineteen in every ten thousand persons. In 1871, with a population
of 22,704,108, there were 56,735 lunatics, or twenty-five out of every ten
thousand persons. Of these lunatics 6,110 were private patients.
* * * * *
_Error of Diagnosis._--"Doctor," said a hard-looking, brandy-faced
customer a few days ago to a physician! "Doctor, I'm troubled with an
oppression and uneasiness about the breast. What do you suppose the matter
is?"
"All very easily accounted for," said the physician; "you have water on
the chest."
"Water! Come, that'll do very well for a joke; but how could I get water
on my chest when I haven't touched a drop in twenty years? If you had said
brandy, you might have hit it."
* * * * *
_Ferocity of a Wasp._--A lady at Grantham observed a wasp tearing a common
fly to pieces on the breakfast table. When first noticed the wasp grasped
the fly firmly, and had cut off a leg and a wing, so that its rescue would
have been no kindness. The wasp was covered with a basin until it should
receive a murderer's doom; and when the basin was removed for its
execution, nothing was seen of the fly but the wings and a number of
little black pieces.
* * * * *
Madame Regina Dal Cin, a famous surgeon of Austria, having performed one
hundred and fifty successful operations in the city hospital at Trieste,
was rewarded by the municipal authorities with a letter of thanks and a
purse of gold.
* * * * *
_A Cool Student._--In the Quartier Latin, Paris, a student was lying in
bed, to which he had gone supperless, trying to devise some means to raise
the wind; suddenly, in the dead of night, his reveries were disturbed by a
"click." Stealthily raising himself in bed, he saw a burglar endeavoring
to open his desk with skeleton keys. The student burst into fits of
laughter; the frightened thief, astounded, inquired the cause of his glee.
"Why, I am laughing to see you take so much trouble to force open my desk
and pick the lock to find the money which I cannot find though I have the
key." The thief picked up his implements, politely expressed his regret
for having uselessly disturbed him, and transferred his talents and
implements to some more Californian quarter.
[Illustration: THE BURGLAR AND STUDENT.]
* * * * *
_How to get rid of a Mother-in-Law._--During the recent small-pox
excitement in Indianapolis, an excited individual rushed into a telegraph
office, hurriedly wrote a despatch, and handed the same to the able and
talented clerk. The message bore the startling intelligence that the
sender's wife was down with the small-pox, and closed with the request
that his mother-in-law come "immediately." While making change, the
telegraph man said, "My friend, are you not afraid your mother-in-law will
take the small-pox?" Without vouchsafing an immediate reply to the query,
the dutiful son-in-law remarked, "Sir, are you a married man?" "No, sir, I
am not." "Then, sir, take my word for it, it's all right. Just bring the
old woman along."
* * * * *
_A Dying Request._--A kind physician living near Boston, wishing to smooth
the last hours of a poor woman whom he was attending, asked her if there
was anything he could do for her before she died. The poor soul, looking
up, replied, "Doctor, I have always thought I should like to have a glass
butter-dish before I died."
[Illustration]