More "Bulls."

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXIII, Issue 7367, 15 November 1898, Page 3

More "Bulls."

In a recent annual report of a benevolent society having its headquarters in Dublin the following delightful sentence occurs' —*' Notwithstanding the large amount paid by the society for medical attendance and medicine, very few deaths occurred during the year." A Cork newspaper published a report of an open-air political meeting in which this paragraph appeared: —"Mr M. A. Brennan next spoke at much length in his usual happy style, but from the distance we were wholly unable to catch the purport of his remarks." In a parliamentary Blue Book containing the annual report of the Commissioners of National Education, and signed by these august personages, the following tilr-bit may be read:—" The female teachers were instructed in plain cooking. They had, in fact, to go through the process of cooking themselves in tnrn, A country woman walking through the streets of Limerick caught sight of a small coffin displayed as a gruesome trade sign in an undertaker's window. " Ob, glory be to God she exclaimed, "is it possible that coffin can be intinded for any livin' crature V The owner of a valuable horse wa3 very indignant with his stableboy for having allowed the animal, which he had taken out for a morning trot, to take head. " The divil a bit o' me could sthop him, sir, for I had no spurs," was the boy's strange excuse. An amusing story wa3 told by a friend who is a dispensary doctor in a union in the south of Ireland. One night he was awakened by a rapping at the front door of his residence, and, on going to the window, saw a laboring man below. " What's the matter, my gooi fellow T' he said. " 'Tis me ould mother that's tuck bad, dochter," replied the man. " Have you been long here ?" asked the doctor. 41 I have, your honner." " And why on earth didn't you ring the night bell ?" " Sure, I was afraid I'd disturb yer honner," was the man's perfectly sincere answer. •' Bulls " often originate in a misunderstanding of the meaning of words ur terms. At an inquest held recently in Galway concerning the death of a child under rather suspicious circumstances, a quack doctor, who the child, stated In the course of his evidence that he had given him Ipecacuanha. " Yon might as well have given the aurora borealis," said the coroner. Now, there is one thing an Irish peasant will not do, and that is acknowledge his ignorance of any subject, so the quack doctor returned j ihs prompt reply: " And sure, yer honor, that was the very thing I was goin to give him next if he hadn't died just thin I" The incapacity of the average Irish mind to rapidly grasp the import of numbers ia also the fruitful source of "bulls." Everyone will remember Charle3 Xeane's picture of the stevedore at the hatchway, shouting down to the men in the hold : " Now then, how many of ye is down there ?" " Five of us." " Thin, half of yes kum up directly," cries the stevedore.