an implacable smile.

* * * * *

"A fourth headmaster wanted to know 'who would liev at Yorb when he
could live at Bournemouth?'"--_Morning Paper._

The answer is "Because there's a 'b' in both."

* * * * *

"Terrible as this war has been, Mr. Hodge sees that if it had not come
Great Britain's imagination. As the hypnotised goat is fate would have
been miserable beyond swallowed by the boat-constrictor, so Great
Britain would have been absorbed by Germany."--_Evening Paper._

With a little rearrangement we can gather the general drift of the
paragraph. But "boat-constrictor" puzzles us. Is it a new kind of
submarine?

* * * * *

[Illustration: OUR LAND-WORKERS.

_Mabel_ (_discussing a turn for the village Red Cross Concert_). "WHAT
ABOUT GETTING OURSELVES UP AS GIRLS?"

_Ethel._ "YES--BUT HAVE WE THE CLOTHES FOR IT?"]

* * * * *

THE INFANTRYMAN.

The gunner rides on horseback, he lives in luxury,
The sapper has his dug-out as cushy as can be,
The flying man's a sportsman, but his home's a long way back,
In painted tent or straw-spread barn or cosy little shack;
Gunner and sapper and flying man (and each to his job, say I)
Have tickled the Hun with mine or gun or bombed him from on high,
But the quiet work, and the dirty work, since ever the War began
Is the work that never shows at all, the work of the infantryman.

The guns can pound the villages and smash the trenches in,
And the Hun is fain for home again when the T.M.B.'s begin,
And the Vickers gun is a useful one to sweep a parapet,
But the real work is the work that's done with bomb and bayonet.
Load him down from heel to crown with tools and grub and kit,
He's always there where the fighting is--he's there unless he's hit;
Over the mud and the blasted earth he goes where the living can;
He's in at the death while he yet has breath, the British infantryman!

Trudge and slip on the shell-hole's lip, and fall in the clinging mire--
Steady in front, go steady! Close up there! Mind the wire!
Double behind where the pathways wind! Jump clear of the ditch, jump
clear!
Lost touch at the back? Oh, halt in front! and duck when the shells come
near!
Carrying parties all night long, all day in a muddy trench,
With your feet in the wet and your head in