On the morning of his arrival, Mr. P. met, in the dining-room of the hotel, a gentleman who was unmistakably a Frenchman, and being in Canada, was probably Canadian.  As they were sitting together at the table, Mr. P., having mentally rubbed up his knowledge of the French language, addressed his companion thus: 

“Avez-vous le chapeau de mon frere?”

The gentleman thus politely addressed, bowed, smiled, and after a little hesitation answered: 

“Non, Monsieur; mais jai le fromage de votre soeur.”

“Eh bien” said Mr. P., as he scratched his head for a moment. “Otez vous vos souliers et vos bas?”

The other answered promptly, “Je n’ote ni les uns ni les autres.”

“Votre pere,” remarked Mr. P., “a-t-il la chandelle de votre oncle?”

His companion remained silent for a minute or two, and then he said: 

“I forget the French of the answer to that, but I know the English of it; it is ’no, sir, but he has the apples-of-the-ground-of-sugar of my mother-in-law.’”

When Mr. P. discovered, after a little conversation in the vernacular, that his companion was a New York dry-goods clerk, he gave up the study of the French-Canadian character and went on with his breakfast.

When he went out into the streets to see the lions of the city he was delighted to meet with some old friends.  In company with them he visited the Government House; the Cathedral; the Statue of NELSON; the VICTORIA bridge; and everything else of interest in the place.  But nothing was so delightful to him as the faces of these old friends, from whom he had been separated so long.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  When, at last, they left him, he returned sadly to New York.]

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IDIOTIC ITEMS.

On Tuesday last one of the swans in Central Park laid a hen’s egg.

A celebrated English professor of heraldry is now at Long Branch, studying the crests of the waves.

Dr. LIVINGSTONE is no longer a white man.  The large colored princess whom he has been compelled to marry has beaten him black and blue.

Louis NAPOLEON’S first bulletin about the war was the bullet in the pocket of NAP Junior.

An intelligent cordwainer of this city has invented a bathing shoe to fit the under-toe at Long Branch.

The lock of the writing-desk made with his own hands by LOUIS NAPOLEON, at Hoboken, has been presented to the Empress EUGENIE by a gentleman residing at Union Hill, in exchange for a lock of her Majesty’s hair.

Yesterday, while three eminent Wall street brokers—­names, BROWN, JONES, and ROBINSON—­were engaged in watering stock, they fell in and were drowned.  Loss fully covered by insurance.

CARL FORMES is oddly reported to have lost his Bass voice through over indulgence in lager-beer.  He drank a barrel of beer a day, and his voice has now become a barrel organ.