y will never improve on the old-fashioned custom
of slapping it heartily on the bread.

***

"People will be able to have their strawberries and cream this
summer," said an official of the Food Ministry the other day.
Still, for association's sake it is thought that the conventional
description, "Marrows and Milk," will be retained on the menus.

***

Professor LEONARD HILL says that people working in gas factories who
have to breathe poison fumes suffer less from influenza than anyone
else. It is thought that this opinion may give a serious set-back to
the Garden City movement.

***

"Hens like artificial light," says Professor RICE, of Cornell
University, "and if provided with it will lay through the winter." One
enterprising gas company, we understand, is already advertising that
no fowl-house can be regarded as adequately furnished without its
egg-in-the-slot meter.

* * * * *

[Illustration: THE FIRST PROHIBITION TIPSY-CAKE IN DEAD MAN'S GULCH,
U.S.A.]

* * * * *

"L5.--Church, nicely situated Gothic structure, sliding
roofs. No ground-rent. Pulpit, Font, Lectern, Organ, Parson,
Choir Boys, Bells; fully seated; electric light, bells,
&c."--_Provincial Paper_.

It seems a nice cheap lot. The parson alone must be worth the money.

* * * * *

"THE TIMES" AS PEACEMAKER.

[On reading the heavy attack made by the "Political"
Correspondent of _The Times_ in Paris on the Peace Conference
leaders, "and in particular the British Prime Minister."]

How like the talk at Babel's Tower
This interchange of tedious chat!
War can be made in half-an-hour
And why should Peace take more than that?
All this procrastination, worst of crimes,
Annoys the Paris Politician of _The Times_.

Had _he_ been summoned to construct
New Heavens and a brand-new Earth,
To cope with Cosmos and conduct
The business of its second birth,
He would have finished months and months ago;
Why, the Creation only took a week or so!

He (while the Moving Spirit wired
Instructions from the South of France)
Would have dispatched, like one inspired,
A thousand details at a glance,
Built corridors for Poland while you wait,
And at a single sitting fixed the Bolshies' fate.

No _seance_ of the secret sort,
Had barred