friend

It isn't out of sentiment—all that is at an end—

It's simply that the highest bid, in cash paid promptly down,

I've had from any son of SHEM is only half-a-crown.

"The plots cultivated by the men who have learned in the best school of all—experience—stand out clearly among the others. There is no overcrowing on their land."—Evening News.

The truly great are always modest.

"Wanted, September and October, a comfortably Furnished House; five bedrooms, in adjoining counties."—East Anglian Daily Times.

It sounds a little detached.

THE COUNTERBLAST.

KAISER. "HAD A GLORIOUS TIME ON THE EASTERN FRONT."

HINDENBURG. "A LITTLE LOUDER, ALL-LOUDEST. I CAN'T HEAR YOU FOR THESE CURSED BRITISH GUNS IN THE WEST."

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THROWING STONES AT THOSE BOYS?"

"IT'S ORL RIGHT, SIR. WE'RE LEARNIN' 'EM TO TAKE COVER FOR AIR RAIDS."

THE MUD LARKS.

Out here the telephone exists largely as a vehicle for the jeux d'esprit of the Brass Lids. It is a one-way affair, working only from the inside out, for if you have a trifle of repartee to impart to the Brazen Ones the apparatus is either indefinitely engaged, or Na poo (as the French say). If you are one of these bulldog lads and are determined to make the thing talk from the outside in, you had better migrate chez Signals, taking your bed, blankets, beer, tobacco and the unexpired portion of next week's ration, and camp at the telephone orderly's elbow. After a day or two it will percolate through to the varlet's intelligence that you are a desperate dog in urgent need of something, and he will bestir himself, and mayhap in a further two or three days' time he will wind a crank, pull some strings, and announce that you are "on," and you will find yourself in animated conversation with an inspector of cemeteries, a jam expert at the Base, or the Dalai Lama. If you want to give back-chat to the Staff you had best take it there by hand.

A friend of mine by name of Patrick once got the job of Temporary Assistant Deputy Lance Staff Captain (unpaid), and before he tumbled to the one-way idea his telephone worked both ways and gave him a lot of trouble. People were always calling him up and asking him questions, which of course wasn't playing the game at all. Sometimes he never got to bed before 10 P.M., answering questions; often he was up again at 9 A.M., answering more questions—and such questions!

A sample. On one occasion he rang up his old battalion. One Jimmy was then Acting Assistant Vice-Adjutant. "Hello, wazzermatter?" said Jimmy. "Staff Captain speaking," said Patrick sternly. "Please furnish a return of all cooks, smoke-helmets, bombs, mules, Yukon-packs, tin bowlers, grease-traps and Plymouth Brothers you have in the field!"

"Easy—beg pardon, yes, Sir," said Jimmy and hung up.

Presently the phone buzzed and there was Jimmy again.

"Excuse me, Sir, but you wanted a return of various commodities we have in the field. What field?"

"Oh, the field of Mars, fat-head!" Patrick snapped and rang off. A quarter of an hour later he was called to the phone once more and the familiar bleat of Jimmy tickled his ear. "Excuse me, Sir—whose mother?"

On