Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 May 1883 — PITH AND PONT. [ARTICLE]

PITH AND PONT.

What a curious language! A man is late when he is dead and gone, and a train is late when it hasn’t come. The census proves that the number of persons in a family in the United States is a small fraction over five. In some families the husband is the small fraction over. After all, there is a vast deal of common sense in the remark of the deserter when he said: “I’d rather be a coward all my life than be a corpse for fifteen minutes.” At a medical examination a young aspirant for a physician’s diploma was asked: “When does mortification ensue?” “When you propose and are rejected,” was the reply. The telephone is in the Sandwich Islands, and, as “hello” in the native dialect is “kalakaihoikauhaihoihaukoi,” you can imagine what kind of a time they have at the “central.” It is now necessary for an inventor to have witnesses to his work, in order to secure his rights. The witnesses must be brought in at the moment the inventor feels like inventing something. It does look something as if the only way to stop these interminable disasters at sea would be to adopt Max Adder’s suggestion of having a man walk along the bottom and hold the blame thing up with a pole.

A Kentucky girl always carries her money in her stocking when she goes shopping, taking along a lady friend to divert the attention of a salesman while she hauls out her money. Her friend must be fascinating beyond belief. A human skeleton may now be bought for $25 dollars. At this price it hardly pays a man to raise his own skeletons; but some poor families will continue to worry along without a skeleton in the house as long as they can get three dogs for a dollar and a half. —Norristown Herald. A legislator, who has a large family at home, and who has to be very saving, entere'd an Austin avenue restaurant about dinner time, and asked for a business consultation, which was granted. “How much do you charge for dinner?” “Fifty cents.” “How much for breakfast?” “Twenty-five c ents. ” “Then bring me a breakfast for dinner?”— Texas Siftings. A nice young man thought he had found something pure and fresh in the shape of a laughing little witch of a girl, and was on the point of proposing marriage, when she scattered his fond hopes to the winds by remarking one evening: “You hug and kiss me pore than any gentleman I am acquainted with, except Bill Wallace; and he is a baggage-smasher, and only edmes here once a month.”

They had only been married a short time. The other day she slung her arm around him and warbled, in a low, tremulous voice: “Do you realize, Adolphus, that now we are married we are only one ?” “No," replied the brute, “I can’t realize it. I have just paid a $75 millinery bill and a lot more of your bills, with several outside precincts to hear from, so I am beginning to real* ize that, as far as expense goes, instead of being one we are about half a dozen. I can’t take in that idea of our being one just yet, not by a large majority. The late Bishop of Oxford prided himself on being able to iderrtify individually all the clergy of his dipcese. But on one occasion when Dr. Wilberforce was dining with a number of them, he observed one clerical brother whose name he did not know. Unwilling to confess his ignorance, and too cautious to make inquiry, the good Bishop approached the unknown, and, by way of a feeler, remarked to him: “I forget how you exactly spell your name;” to which the somewhat discomfiting reply was, “J-o-n-e-s.” An eminent Judge used to say that, in his opinion, the very best thing ever said by a witness to counsel was the reply given to Missing, the barrister, at the time leader of his circuit, He was defending a prisoner charged with stealing a donkey. The prosecutor had left the animal tied up to a gate, and when he returned it was gone. Missing was very severe in his examination of the witness. “Do you mean to say, witness, the donkey was stolen from the gate?” “I mean to say, sti,* giving the Judge and jury a sly look, at the same time pointing to the counsel, “the ass was Missing.” John Hodges, an Austin business man, is being constantly fleeced, not only by strangers, but even by his own son, without his ever knowing it. Not long since he was speaking to a friend, who cynically remarked: “Your son seems to be a rather fashionable young man.” “Yes,” was the reply of Hodges, “he is an awful smart boy. He keeps a horse and buggy, goes to balls and parties, dresses in the height of the fashion, and the most wonderful thing about it is he does it on S4O a month. He is smarter than I am, but my daddy , wasn’t as smart as his daddy.”— Texas Siftings.