e
Fruit in serried cluster;
Conduct stripes he proudly wore,
One for every lustre.

Picture then the blank amaze
When this model rating
Suddenly developed traits
Most incriminating.

Faults in baser spirits deemed
Merely peccadillos
In that crystal mirror seemed
Vast as Biscay billows.

Cautioned not to over-run
Naval toleration,
He replied in language un-
Fit for publication.

When the captain in alarm
Strove to solve the riddle,
Edward slipped a dreamy arm
Round that awful middle.

Such a catastrophic change
Set his shipmates thinking;
Rumour whispered, "It is strange;
Clearly he is drinking."

Ever more insistent got
This malicious fable,
Till he tied a true-love's knot
In the anchor cable.

* * * * *

"During December, 1661, meals for necessitous school children were
provided at Chorley at a cost of 4d. per meal per scholar."

_Provincial Paper._

In gratitude for the Restoration, we suppose. Hence the watchword, "Good
old Chorley!"

* * * * *

"Summoned for permitting three houses to stray on Stoke Park on the
19th inst ... defendant admitted the offence, but said that some
one must have let them out by taking the chain off the
gate."--_Provincial Paper_.

It seems a reasonable explanation.

[Illustration: _Officer_ (_to Tommy, who has been using the whip
freely_). "Don't beat him; talk to him, man--talk to him!"

_Tommy_ (_to horse, by way of opening the conversation_). "I coom from
Manchester."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)

The latest of our writers to contribute to the growing literature of the
War is Mr. Hugh Walpole. He has written a book about it called _The Dark
Forest_ (Secker), but whether it is a good or a bad book I who have read
it carefully from cover to cover confess my inability to decide. It is
certainly a clever book, and violently unusual. I doubt whether the War
is likely to produce anything else in the least resembling it. For one
thing, it deals with a phase of the struggle, the Russian retreat
through Galicia, about which we in England are still tragically
ignorant. Mr. Walpole writes of this as he himself has seen it in his
own experience as a worker with the Russian Red Cross. Th