* * *

COMMERCIAL ALTRUISM.

"Why not give your jaded palate a new pleasure? 'Impossible!' you
say. This is so, if you smoke Our Tobacco, otherwise not nearly
so impossible as you think."--_Port Elizabeth Paper_.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Farmer_ (_contemplating new hand_). "WELL, AT ALL
EVENTS HE DON'T SEEM TO BE INFECTED WITH THIS HERE LABOUR UNREST."]

* * * * *

THE ARK.

[The Dean of LINCOLN is reported to have informed the Lower House
of Convocation that he "simply did not believe" in the Biblical
episode of the Ark.]

The dangerous voyage at length is o'er
And she has crossed the oilcloth floor
And grounded on the woolly mat,
The wooded slopes of Ararat.
Upon this lately flooded land
It's very difficult to stand
The animals in double row,
When some have lost a leg or so;
A book is best to carry those
Who still feel sea-sick in their toes.
For NOAH and his sons and wives
This is the moment of their lives;
They walk together up and down
In stiff wide hat and dressing-gown,
Well pleased to greet the dove once more,
Who landed safe the day before.

You recollect that day of rain,
Of drumming roof, of streaming pane,
How, just before the hour of tea,
A great light bathed the nursery;
And you those tiresome tresses shook
Back from your eyes and whispered, "Look!"
The day-lost sun was sinking low,
Filling the world with after-glow;
We saw together, you and I,
A rainbow right across the sky.

* * * * *

Though years divide us, old and grey,
From childhood's distant yesterday;
In spite of unbelieving Deans
We still know what a rainbow means.

* * * * *

MUSICAL GOSSIP FROM THE GERMAN FRONT.

"For the last twenty years," writes M. JEAN-AUBRY, a distinguished
French musical critic, "the temple of German music has been no longer
at Bonn, or Weimar, or Munich, or Bayreuth, but at Essen. The modern
German orchestra, with Strauss and Mahler, was concerned more with the
preoccupations of artillery and the siege-train than with those of
real music. It desired to become a rival of Krupp."

These remarks are borne out in a remarkable way by the latest news
of STRAUSS. It has always been very difficult to obtain precise
intelligence about his works, owing to his notorious aversi