AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
363 
From the Knickerbocker. 
A correspondent in Ottawa county, Michi¬ 
gan, from whom we are always glad to hear, 
gives us the following scene in the Mayor’s 
Court at Grand Rapids, Mayor Church pre¬ 
siding. Witness called up to be sworn by 
the clerk : 
Clerk—“You do solemnly swear-” 
Mayor, ( with dignity) —“ Stop ! The wit¬ 
ness will hold up his right hand.” 
Clerk—“ The man has no right hand, your 
Honor.” 
Mayor, (ivith some asperity )—“ Let him 
hold up his left hand, then.” 
Clerk—“ He has had the misfortune to lose 
his left hand also , as your Honor will per¬ 
ceive.” 
Mayor, ( savagely )—“ Tell him to hold up 
his right leg, then ; a man can not be sworn 
in this court without holding up something! 
Silence, gentlemen ! Our dignity must be 
preserved !” (Witness sworn on one leg.) 
Was that swearing, or affirming? 
An Irishman, at a country tavern, was 
observed by a friend of ours to be looking 
long and intently at the bar-post near the 
house, to which a traveler had tied his horse, 
by slipping the fold of the bridle through the 
hole for a bar, and then throwing the bight of 
the fold over the head of the post—a very 
common and effectual mode of fastening 
horses in the country. On being asked what 
he observed to attract attention, Paddy re¬ 
plied : “ Shure, and I’m afther wondering 
how the haste got through the hole, after the 
bridle was hung up !” The mystery of the 
tie being explained, he departed a wiser man. 
This is good, but not quite so bright as was 
the Yankee lad who saw, for the first time, 
some sailors raising a heavy anchor at the 
bow of a ship in port, for the purpose of 
securing or ‘ fishing’ it, as we believe it is 
called. They were singing away at their 
work, with the usual “ Yo ! heave oh !” when 
the green spectator, who had stopped to 
scrutinize a little, hailed them with : “ You 
may 1 heave-ho !’ and ‘ hi-ho !’ all night, but 
you won’t get that big croocked thing 
through that hole in a hurry—now mind 1 
tell ye !” He thought they were trying to 
draw the anchor through the hawse-hole ! 
A correspondent at Canaan Four-Corners 
sends us the following as a veritable copy ot 
an inscription upon a tomb-stone in that vi 
cinity : Alamenting spouse thus records the 
departure of her faithful and beloved half : 
“ My husband’s name was Bill: 
It was God’s will 
That he should be killed in a mill; 
Avery sad sight for me to behold, indeed.” 
Very concise, and extremely pathetic ! 
Our Pacific contemporary, the Pioneer, of 
San Francisco, conducted with signal ability 
by Mr. F. C. Ewer, tells the following good 
story of General Worth : “ Did you ever 
hear how fond he was of cauliflowers? He 
had a passion for that vegetable ; a love sur¬ 
passing the love of women. When stationed 
at West-Point, long, long ago, in command 
of the corps of cadets, he had a little garden 
in the rear of his quarters plowed up and 
planted entirely with cauliflowers. How he 
watched over that little plantation ! Firsi 
the small green leaf, then the respectably- 
sized plant, then the imperfectly-developed 
head; until one day, returning from his du¬ 
ties, his mouth watering at the thought thai 
at dinner he should enjoy his first cauliflow¬ 
er from his own garden, he saw—horror oi 
horrors !—Old Berard’s cow leisurely finish 
ing the very last cauliflower in that same 
garden. For an instant, Worth's grief, dis¬ 
may, and indignation were too great for ut¬ 
terance ; until, at last he brokeforth: ‘Verj 
well, madam! Perhaps you’d like a little 
drawn bu'ter on that!—confound your epicu¬ 
rean soul!’ Then followed a brick, and a 
graceful movement on the part of the cow.” 
One of the most important members of the 
democratic party, in a far western town, 
which shall be nameless ; of whom it is said 
that he never finished a speech, sentiment, 
or sentence in public, without making a fail¬ 
ure, inconsequence of too ambitious a start; 
at a supper given in honor of General Cass’s 
visit to that region, three years since, made 
the following faux pas: Rising in his place, 
and calling attention by a thump on the table, 
he exclaimed : “ The Democratic Party : the 
idol of the people, the hope of the world, the 
temple of true patriotism; so long as its 
members are true to their trust, the malevo¬ 
lent vituperations of its hereditary enemies, 
the whigs and abolitionists, are—are”—(a 
long pause, the speaker evidently stuck, 
and growing more confused every instant,) 
“are bound, gentlemen, (pause,) bound, gen¬ 
tlemen, to— slump through /” With which 
peroration he sat down, and wiped the sweat 
from off his streaming face. 
The day before the last Fourth of July, 
writes a Hudson correspondent, our little 
George prayed as follows, before going to 
bed : “ O Lord, please don't let it rain to¬ 
morrow, ’cause I want to fire off crackers.” 
Our little Katy, too, an innocent of some 
three or four summers, once offered up this 
supplication : “ 0 Lord bless my father and 
mother; and bless my sister Annie, who 
flounced my new frock, but ‘ Cud ’ (her cous¬ 
in) made the button-holes!” 
Another ‘poeck’ has been imitating, or try¬ 
ing to imitate, our M-eat bard, in an “ Owed 
to the Steem Fire-mgine, sejested by Seaing 
it Skwirt.” We give its close : 
“ Steem Fire-Engine !—your useful You 
use wood and koal—you make 
a big noise with your whistle, and 
You leave a streek of fire behind you 
in the streat. But, Steam Fire ingine ! your 
Useful. Your a—a trump. Goon! 
Go on—Grate old Skwirt !” 
One of our Western farmers, being very 
much annoyed last summer by his best sow 
breaking into the corn-field, search was insti¬ 
tuted in vain for a hole in the rail-fence. 
Failing to find any, an attempt was next 
made to drive out the animal by the same 
way of her entrance ; but of course without 
success. The owner then resolved to watch 
her proceedings ; and posting himself at 
night in a fence-corner, he saw her enter at 
one end of a hollow log, outside the field, 
and emerge at the other end, within the in¬ 
closure. “ Eureka cried he, “ I have you 
now, old lady !” Accordingly, he proceeded, 
after turning her out once more, to so arrange 
the log (it being very crooked) that both 
ends opened on the outside of the field. The 
next day, the animal was observed to enter 
at her accustomed place, and shortly emerge 
again. “ Her astonishment,” says our-inform- 
ant, “ at finding herself in the same field 
whence she had started is too ludicrous to be 
described ! She looked this way and then 
that, grunted her dissatisfaction, and finally 
returned to the original starting-place ; and 
after a deliberate survey of matters, to satis¬ 
fy herself that it was all right, she again 
entered the log. On emerging yet once 
more on the wrong side, she evinced even 
more surprise than before, and turning about, 
retraced the log in an opposite direction. 
Finding this effort likewise in vain, after 
looking long and attentively at the position of 
things, with a short, angry grunt of disap¬ 
pointment, and perhaps fear, she turned short 
round, and started off on a brisk run ; nor 
:ould either coaxing or driving ever after in 
luce her to visit that part of the field.” She 
seemed to have a superstition concerning 
the spot. 
Punch says: Toleration means allowing 
you think as I do, but directly you want 
me to think as you do, then it’s gross intol¬ 
eration. 
A Nigger Boarding House. —The follow¬ 
ing good story is told, by the Rahway Advo¬ 
cate, at the expense of one of the “ upper 
ten of our city : 
Mr.-is one of the “merchant princes” 
of the Empire City, and though living in one 
of the most spacious mansions on the Fifth- 
avenue, his entire family consists of himself 
and his wife. Meeting a friend from the 
country one day, he invited him up to view 
his house. The friend was shown the gorg- 
ous rooms, with tessellated floors and mag¬ 
nificent frescoed ceilings, and finally was 
taken into the lower rooms, in one of which 
he found a small regiment of colored serv¬ 
ants seated at a bountiful dinner. 
On his return home he was asked if he 
had seen Mr. So-and-so ? 
“ Oh, yes.” 
“ What is he doing now ?” 
“ Well, when I saw him he was keeping a 
nigger hoarding house on the Fifth avenue !” 
Specimens of Modern Syntax. —A New- 
Orleans editor, recording the career of a mad 
dog, says : “ We are grieved to say that the 
rabid animal, before it could be killed, se¬ 
verely bit Dr. Hart and several other dogs." 
A New-York paper, announcing the wreck¬ 
ing of a vessel near the Narrows, says : 
“ The only passengers were T. B. Nathan, 
who owned three-fourths of the cargo and 
the captain's wife." 
The editor of a western paper observes : 
“The poem which we publish this week was 
written by an esteemed friend, who has Lin 
many years in the grave for his own amuse¬ 
ment." 
The editor of an eastern paper expresses 
great indignation at the manner in which a 
woman was buried, who had committed sui¬ 
cide. He say : “ She was buried like a dog 
with her clothes on.” 
A Duelling Anecdote. —Two Spanish 
officers met to fight a duel outside the gates 
of Bilboa, after the seconds had failed to re¬ 
concile the belligerents. 
“ We wish to fight—to fight to death.” 
they replied to the representations of their 
companions. 
At this moment a poor fellow, looking like 
the ghost of Romeo’s apothecary, approached 
the seconds, and in a lamentable voice, 
said : 
Gentlemen, I am a poor artizan, with a 
large family, and would—” 
“ My good man, don’t trouble us now,” cried 
one of the officers, “ don’t you see that my 
friends are going to split each other? We 
are not in a Christian humor.” 
“ It is not alms I ask for,” said the man ; 
“ I am a poor carpenter with eight children ; 
and my wife is sick ; and having heard that 
those two gentlemen were about to kill 
each other, I thought of asking you to let 
me make the coffins.” 
At these words the individuals about to 
commence the combat, burst into a loud fit 
of laughter, and simultaneously throwing 
down their swords, shook hands with each 
other, and walked away. 
Say !—Why can’t young ladies abstain 
from kissing babies frantically before stran¬ 
gers ? 
Why can't a man visit Paris without re¬ 
turning with a supernatural tooth brush, in 
the guise of a moustache? And lastly. 
How does it happen that whenever you 
chance to stop out late, upon your retirement 
as quietly as possible, every door creaks ten 
times as much as usual, and the stairs go off 
like parks of artillery ? Diogenes. 
