all perfectly splendid. She hasn't the least doubt about anything. She knows the uncle of a man whose cousin is in the War Office and often sees Lord Kitchener in the corridors, and he's quite certain——"

"Who? Lord Kitchener?"

"No, the uncle of the man whose cousin—he's quite certain the War will be over in our favour before next June, because there'll be a revolution in Potsdam and thousands of Germans are being killed in bread-riots every day, and lots of stuff of that sort."

"I understand," I said. "You began to react against it."

"Something of that kind. She was so terribly serene and so dreadfully over-confident that I got contradictious and had to argue with her—simply couldn't restrain myself—and then she said she was sorry I was such a pessimist, and I said I wasn't, and here I am."

"Yes," I said, "you are, and in a state of Cimmerian gloom, naturally enough. But you've come to the right place—no, by Jove, now that I think of it you've come to the wrong place, the very wrongest place in the world."

"How's that?"

"Because I met old Captain Burstall out walking, and he was miserable about everything. According to him we haven't got a dog's chance anywhere. The Government's rotten, the Army's rotten, the Navy's worse and the British Empire's going to be smashed up before Easter."

"Captain Burstall's the man for my money. If I'd only met him I should have been as cheerful as a lark."

"And that," I said, "is exactly what I am, entirely owing to a natural spirit of contradiction. I just pulled myself together and countered him on every point."

"I daresay you did it very well," she said; "but if you're as cock-a-hoop as you make out I don't see how I'm ever to get rid of my depression. I shall be starting to contradict you next."

"Which," I said, "will be an entirely novel experience for both of us. But I'll tell you a better way; let's keep silent for ten minutes and simmer back to our usual condition of reasonable hopefulness."

"I can't promise silence," she said, "but I'll back myself against the world as a simmerer."

R. C. L.

Jarge (on a visit to London). "Let's go oop past th' War Office, Maria. We might see Kitchener."

Maria. "We'll do nothin' o' th' sort. More'n likely you two'd get talkin' an' we'd miss our train."

Shakspeare to the Slackers:—

"Dishonour not your mothers; now attest." Henry V., Act III., Scene I.

Joan (reading). "It says here that this war is Armagideon, and the end as the would is fixed for the beginning of April."

Darby. "There, now! I always said the Kaiser would wriggle out of it somehow!"

ANOTHER AIR SCANDAL.

If ever I write a Hymn of Hate, or, at any rate, of resentment, it will not be about the Germans, but about a certain type of Englishman whom I encounter far too often and shall never understand. The Germans are now beyond any hymning, however fervent; they are, it is reassuring to think, a class by themselves. But my man should be hymned, not because it will do him any good, but because it relieves my feelings.

It is really rather a curious case, for he might be quite a nice fellow and, I have little doubt, often is; but he boasts and flaunts an inhuman insensibility that excites one's worst passions.

What would you say was the quality or characteristic most to be desired in every member of our social common-wealth? Obviously there is only one reply to this question: that he should be decently susceptible to draughts. If society is to go on, either we must all be so pachydermatous as to be able to disregard draughts, or we must feel them and act accordingly. There should not be here and there a strange Ishmaelite creature whose delight it is to be played upon by boreal blasts. But there is. I meet him in the train, and the other day I hymned him.

O thou (my hymn of dislike, of annoyance, of remonstrance began):—

I don't pretend to be satisfied with these lines. They are not strong, not complete. Mr. Joynson-Hicks would have done it more fittingly. Still they might do a little good somewhere, and every little helps.

Overtime.

"The evidence was that defendants employed six young persons for more than seven days a week."—Provincial Paper.

"The organist played as opening voluntaries the 'Bridal March' from 'Lohengrin,' Barnaby's 'Bridal March' from 'Lohengrin,' and Barnaby's 'Bridal March.'"

Provincial Paper.

It was evidently Barnaby's. Still, we think Wagner might have been mentioned as his collaborator.

"In the current number of the Commonwealth Canon Scott Holland in his own inimical manner endorses all that Mr. Carey has been writing in our columns recently."

Clerical Paper.

The Canon appears to be one of those jolly people who slap you on the back as if they would knock you down.

AT THE FRONT.

Of recent days we have almost stopped pretending to be soldiers and owned up to being civilian labourers lodged in the War zone. This is felt so acutely that several leading privates have quite discarded that absolute attribute of the infantryman, the rifle. They return from working parties completely unarmed, discover the fact with a mild and but half-regretful