roam its virgin lawns beside,

All shimmering in their velvet fleece,

"Nothing can hurt this haunt of Peace."

O.S.

RANDOM FLIGHTS.

By Marcus Macleod.

(With renewed acknowledgments to "The Skittish Weekly.")

It was with inexpressible relief that I heard of the narrow escape of the Rev. Urijah Basham. Presiding at a jumble sale at Sidcup he described how he had been within an ace of partaking of rhubarb leaves at luncheon on the previous day, but, having read in the morning's paper of their fatal results, wisely decided to abstain. I need hardly remind my readers that Mr. Basham is, after the Rev. Joseph Hocking, perhaps our greatest preacher-novelist. The jumble sale was held in the beautiful concert hall of the Sidcup Temperance Congregational Reed Band. The Dowager-Lady Bowler, Sir Moses Pimblett, and the Rev. Chadley Bandman were amongst those who graced the function with their presence.

A correspondent has kindly sent me a copy of The Little Diddlington Parish Magazine for April. In it there is an interesting letter claiming that the original of Mr. Pickwick was a benevolent gentleman named Swizzle, who was temporarily employed as perpetual curate of Little Diddlington in the sixties. The evidence on which this identification is founded seems to me somewhat unconvincing, as Pickwick was published in the year 1836. But Nature, as it has been finely said, often borrows from Art, and Fact may similarly be inspired to emulate Fiction.

I promised not to trouble my readers again with the Mystery of the Man in the Iron Mask. But I may be allowed merely to mention that there is an excellent study of the subject in The Methodist Monthly, by my old friend, Professor Corker. The article, which runs to nearly seventy pages, does the utmost credit to this brilliant writer, who comes to the conclusion that no satisfactory solution of the mystery has ever been propounded or ever can be. But while his examination of the different theories is singularly free from bias he is evidently impressed by the ingenious view of Dr. Amos Stoot, the eminent Chicago alienist, that the masked inmate of the Bastille immured himself voluntarily in order to investigate the conditions of French prison life at the time, but, owing to the homicidal development of his subliminal consciousness, was detained indefinitely by the authorities, and during his imprisonment wrote the Letters of Junius.

I have been reading with much enjoyment, and I hope profit, a book entitled Behind the Ivory Gate; Being the Reminiscences of a Dentist, by Orlando Pullar, F.R.D.S. Mr. Pullar's opportunities for studying the psychology of his clients have been exceptional, and he has turned them to rich account in these fascinating pages. He is, moreover, as adroit with his pen as with the instruments of his humane and benevolent calling, and has a pretty wit. Thus he tells us that his villa at Balham is named "Tusculum," and that, in view of the fact that three generations of Pullars have been dentists, his family can be said to be of "old extraction." This pleasant quip I seem to have heard before; but, with all deductions, there are many signs here of a strong sagacious mind, that brings to bear on all the jars of daily life the priceless emollient of moral uplift.

THE HYPNOTIST.

Bethmann-Hollweg: "KEEP LOOKING AT ME. YOU'RE WINNING THE WAR! YOU'RE WINNING THE WAR! YOU'RE WINNING THE WAR!"

THE MUD LARKS.

Never have I seen a kiltie platoon wading through the cold porridge of snow and slush of which our front used to be composed, but I have said, with my French friend, "Mon Dieu, les currents d'air!" and thank Fate that I belong to a race which reserves its national costume for fancy-dress balls.

It is very well for MacAlpine of Ben Lomond, who has stalked his haggis and devoured it raw, who beds down on thistles for preference and grows his own fur; but it is very hard on Smith of Peckham, who through no fault of his own finds himself in a Highland regiment, trying to make his shirt-tails do where his trousers did before. But the real heather-mixture, double-distilled Scot is a hardy bird with different ideas from nous autres as to what is cold: also as to what is hot. Witness the trying experience of our Albert Edward.

Our Albert Edward and a Hun rifle grenade arrived at the same place at the same time, intermingled and went down to the Base to be sifted. In the course of time came a wire from our Albert Edward, saying he had got the grenade out of his system and was at that moment at the railhead; were we going to send him a horse or weren't we?

Emma was detailed for the job, which was a mistake, because Emma was not the mount for a man who had been softening for five months in hospital. She had only two speeds in her repertoire, a walk which slung you up and down her back from her ears to her croup, and a trot which jarred your teeth loose and rattled the buttons off your tunic. However, she went to the railhead and Albert Edward mounted her, threw the clutch into the first speed and hammered out the ten miles to our camp, arriving smothered in snow and so stiff we had to lift him down, so raw it was a mockery to offer him a chair, and therefore he had to take his tea off the mantelpiece.

We advised a visit to Sandy. Sandy was the hot bath merchant. He lurked in a dark barn at the end of the village, and could be found there at anytime of any day, brooding over the black cauldrons in which the baths were brewed, his Tam-o'-shanter drooped over one eye, steam condensing on his blue nose. Theoretically the hot baths were free, but in practice a franc pressed into Sandy's forepaw was found to have a strong calorific effect on the water.

So down the village on all fours, groaning like a Dutch brig in a cross-sea, went our Albert Edward. He crawled into the dark barn and, having

no smaller change, contributed a two-franc bill to the forepaw and