_Bibo_.--Is there a champagne wine having the flavor of gun-flints?
_Answer_.--The wine made at Pierry, in the Champagne country, is said by
connoisseurs to be so flavored. There is much alarm now among the
wine-growers, however, lest the next vintage may have a flavor of
percussion-caps instead, owing to the war and the modern weapons.
_Plantagenet de Vere_.--Would you believe a person named JONES on his
oath?
_Answer_.--We would not.
_Smike_. We read of houses being "gutted" by the Prussian soldiers; have
houses entrails, then?
_Answer_.--All occupied houses have livers, and most houses have lights.
_M. T. Head_.--We cannot pay strangers in advance for contributions that
have not been sent in by them.
_Icarus_.--What do the balloon scouts of Paris use for ballast?
_Answer_.--Bundles of newspapers, chiefly. Immense bales of the unsold
copies of the New York _Free Press_ are now exported for the purpose.
They are preferred to any other papers because, when placed anywhere in
the balloon, they Lie so, and, having already fallen from grace, falling
from a balloon is nothing to them.
_Taxidermist_.--What is the best material for stuffing ballot-boxes
with?
_Answer_.--Greenbacks.
_Leatherhead_.--Is it true that most of the prominent men of
England--"TOM BROWN" HUGHES, for instance--are proficient pugilists?
_Answer_.--We have never seen "TOM BROWN" spar, but we have often seen
JOHN STUART Mill.
_Abby Gansevoort_.--No, my dear, your name does not occur in any of
SHAKESPEARE'S plays.
_Figdrum_.--Born to the drudgery of commerce, I aspire to literature:
what am I to do to see my name in print?
_Answer_.--Put it in the City Directory.
_Voice-in-the-Fog_.--Why is it that all the queer isms of the day, such
as socialism, are more cultivated by Red Republicans than by any other
political sect?
_Answer_.--Red, as artists well know, is the complementary or opposite
color to green. The social phenomenon to which you refer, then, may be
accounted for on the principle that extremes meet.
_Clericus_.--Is it proper for me, as a clergyman, to wear moustaches?
_Answer_.--Quite so, unless they are red, in which case they might
interfere with your published sermons.
_Astrolabe_.--What is the exact distance between the Dog Star and
Roxbury, Mass.?
_Answer_.--We do not know. PUNCHINELLO is not a Sirius journal.
_Juniper Byles_.--My rent has just been raised, and I have had a
curtain-lecture from my wife for swearing about it. Would not you swear
if your rent was raised?
_Answer_.--Certainly not--at least not if it was raised by benevolent
subscription.
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