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OUT OF REACH.

"Just ask Dr. Jones to run round to my place right away. Our cook's fallen downstairs, broke her leg; the housemaid's got chicken-pox; and my two boys have been knocked down by a taxi."

"I'm sorry, sir, but the doctor was blown up in yesterday's air-raid and he won't be down for a week."

AT BRIGHTON.

Tommy (to alien Visitor about to run up to Town for the day). "THIS IS THE VICTORIA PORTION, OLD SPORTSKI. HIGHER UP FOR LONDON BRIDGEOVITCH."

BEASTS ROYAL.

v.

KING LOUIS' PEACOCK. A.D. 1678.

Queer Cattle.

"Of the 217 sheep sold at the Sunderland Mart, yesterday, there was a very large percentage of heifers and bullocks."—Newcastle Daily Journal.

News from the Russian Front: Pop goes the Oesel.

"Chauffeur Gardener wanted, titled gentleman."—Glasgow Herald.

We have often mistaken a taxi-driver for a lord.

PRESENCE OF MIND.

The train came to one of those sudden stops in which the hush caused by the contrast between the rattle of the wheels and their silence is almost painful. During these pauses one is conscious of conversation in neighbouring compartments, without however hearing any distinct words.

There were several of us, strangers to each other, who hitherto had been minding our own business, but under the stress of this untoward thing became companionable.

A man at each window craned his body out, but withdrew it without information.

"I hope," said another, "there's not an accident."

"I have always heard," said a fourth, "that in a railway accident presence of mind is not so valuable as absence of body"—getting off this ancient pleasantry as though it were his own.

The motionlessness of the train was so absolute as to be disconcerting; also a scandal. The business of trains, between stations, is to get on. We had paid our money, not for undue stoppages, but for movement in the direction of our various goals; and it was infamous.

Somebody said something of the kind.

"Better be held up now," said a sententious man, "than be killed for want of prudence."

No one was prepared to deny this, but we resented its truth and availed ourselves of a true-born free Briton's right to doubt the wisdom of those in authority. We all, in short, looked as though we knew better than engine-driver, signalman or guard. That is our métier.

Some moments, which, as in all delays on the line, seemed like hours, passed and nothing happened. Looking out I saw heads and shoulders protruding from every window, with curiosity stamped on all their curves.

"They should tell us what's the matter," said an impatient man. "That's one of the stupid things in England—no one ever tells you what's wrong. No tact in this country—no imagination."

We all agreed. No imagination. It was the national curse.

"And yet," said another man with a smile, "we get there."

"Ah! that's our luck," said the impatient man. "We have luck far beyond our deserts." He was very cross about it.

Again the first man to speak hoped it was not an accident; and again the second man, fearing that someone might have missed it, repeated the old jest about presence of mind and absence of body.

"Talking of presence of mind," said a man who had not yet spoken, emerging from his book, "an odd thing happened to me not so very long ago—since the War—and, as it chances, happened in a railway carriage too—as it might be in this. It is a story against a friend of mine, and I hope he's wiser now, but I'll tell it to you."

We had not asked for his story but we made ourselves up to listen.

"It was during the early days of the War," he said, "before some of us had learned better, and my friend and I were travelling to the North. He is a very good fellow, but a little hasty, and a little too much disposed to think everyone wrong but himself. Opposite us was a man hidden behind a newspaper, all that was visible of him being a huge pair of legs in knickerbockers, between which was a bag of golf-clubs.

"My friend at that time was not only suspicious of everyone's patriotism but a deadly foe of golf. He even went so far as to call it Scotch croquet and other contemptuous names. I saw him watching the clubs and the paper and speculating on the age of the man, whose legs were, I admit, noticeably young, and he drew my attention to him too—by nudges and whispers. Obviously this was a shirker.

"For a while my friend contented himself with half-suppressed snorts and other signs of disapproval, but at last he could hold himself in no longer. Leaning forward he tapped the man smartly on the knee, with the question, 'Why aren't you in khaki?' It was an inquiry, you will remember, that was being much put at the time—before compulsion came in.

"We all—there were two or three other people in the compartment—felt that this was going too far; and I knew it only too well when the man lowered his paper to see what was happening and revealed an elderly face with a grey beard absolutely out of keeping with those vigorous legs.

"To my intense relief, however, he seemed to have been too much engrossed by his paper to have heard. At any rate he asked my friend