are Come!"

First Player (who has had a run of ill-luck). I'm regularly haunted by the recollection of my losses at Baccarat.

Second Player. Quite Shakspearian! "Banco's" Ghost.

A PRIZE.

Little Spiffkins. "DON'T YOU THINK ONE MIGHT GET UP A DANCE HERE SOME EVENING?"

Young Brown. "NOT GIRLS ENOUGH, MY BOY!"

Little Spiffkins. "NOT GIRLS ENOUGH! WHY, I'VE GOT TO KEEP 'EM OFF ME WITH A STICK!"

CONVERSATIONAL HINTS FOR YOUNG SHOOTERS.

LUNCH (continued).—How delightful it is to awaken interest in the female breast, to make the heart of lovely woman go pit-pat, as her eyes read the words one's pen has written. Even in drawing-rooms and boudoirs, it seems, bright eyes have marked these attempts to teach a correct conversational manner to those who engage in game-shooting. Here is one letter of the hundreds that Mr. Punch has one by one pressed to his gallant lips with an emotion that might, perhaps, not have been expected from one of his years and discretion. But how shall time or caution prevail against universal love? The flame burns on with an unquenchable ardour. Beautiful beings, the Punch of your affections is true to you all. He takes you in a lump and loves you. He takes you singly and adores you, passionately but paternally. Here, therefore, is the letter:—

DEAREST MR. PUNCH,

We have all been so delighted to read your articles about shooting. I read them to Papa after dinner in the drawing-room. Mamma says she doesn't understand such matters; but, of course, things have altered very much since her young days, as she is always telling us. Now I want to ask your opinion about an important point. Do you think girls ought to go out and join the men at lunch? We all think it so delightful, but FRED, my eldest brother, makes himself extremely disagreeable about it—at least he did till last week, when EMILY RAYBURN, who is my very dearest friend, was staying with us. Then he told me we might come for a change, but we were to go home again directly afterwards. Generally he says that women are a bore out shooting. Please tell us, dear Mr. Punch, what you really think about it.

With much love, yours always,

ROSE LARKING.

P.S.—I am so glad you write the word "lunch," and not "luncheon." I told FRED that—but he went to Johnson's Dictionary, and read out something about "Lunch" being only a colloquial form of "luncheon." Still, I don't care a little bit. Dr. JOHNSON lived so long ago, and couldn't possibly know everything—could he?

R.L.

My darling young lady, I reply, your letter has made a deep impression on me. Dr. JOHNSON did, as you say, live many years ago; so many years ago, in fact, that (as a little friend of Mr. Punch once said, with a sigh, on hearing that someone would have been one hundred and fifty years old if he had been alive at the present day) he must be "a orfle old angel now." The word "lunch" is short, crisp, and appetising. The word "luncheon" is of a certain pomposity, which, though it may suit the mansions of the great, is out of place when applied to the meals of active sportsmen. So we will continue, if you please, to speak of "lunch." And now for your question. My charming ROSE, this little treatise does not profess to do anything more than teach young sportsmen how to converse. I assume that they have learnt shooting from other instructors. And as to the details of shooting-parties, how they should be composed, what they should do or avoid, and how they should bear themselves generally—the subject is too great, too solemn, too noble to be entered upon with a light heart. At any rate, that is not my purpose here. It was rude—very rude—of FRED to say you were a bore—and I am sure it wasn't true. I can picture you tripping daintily along with your pretty companions to the lunch rendezvous. You are dressed in a perfectly fitting, tailor-made dress, cut short in the skirt, and displaying the very neatest and smallest pair of ankles that ever were seen. And your dear little nose is just a leetle—not red, no, certainly not red, but just delicately pink on its jolly little tip, having gallantly braved the north wind without a veil. To call you a bore is absurd. But men are such brutes, and it is as certain as that two and two (even at our public schools) make four, that ladies are—what shall I say?—not so popular as they always ought to be when they come amongst shooters engaged in their sport. Even at lunch they are not always welcomed with enthusiasm. This is, perhaps, wrong, for, after all, they can do no harm there.

But, darling ROSE, I am sure FRED was perfectly right to send you home again directly the meal was over, though it must have wrung his manly heart to part from EMILY RAYBURN. Even, I, the veteran sportsman Punch, have qualms when a poor bird has been merely wounded, or when a maimed hare shrieks as the dog seizes it. I cannot, as I say, discuss the ethics of the question. The good shot is the merciful shot. But, after all, in killing of every kind, whether by the gun or the butcher's knife, there is an element of cruelty. And therefore, my pretty ROSE, you must keep away from the shooting. Besides, have I not seen a good shot "tailor" half-a-dozen pheasants in succession, merely because a chattering lady—not a dear, pleasant little lump of delight like you, ROSE—had posted herself beside him, and made him nervous? By all means come to lunch if you must, but, equally by all means, leave the guns to themselves afterwards. As for ladies who themselves shoot, why the best I can wish them is, that they should promptly shoot themselves. I can't abide them. Away with them!

But, in order that the purpose of this work may be fulfilled, and the conversational method inculcated, I here give a short "Ladies-at-lunch-dialogue," phonographically recorded, as a party of five guns was approaching the place of lunch, at about 1:30 P.M.

[The Keeper eventually promises that there shall be pins at the farm-house.