Bond Street's aisle,
Far from his land of cairn and creel
In grey Argyle.

I wonder if in dreams he goes
Afar from streets and kindred woes,
A-rabbiting with eager nose
And strenuous paw
In birch-woods where the west wind blows
By banks of Awe;

And if his slumbers take him back
To trail the mountain-fox's track,
In corries of the shifting wrack
Where one may spy
Old Cruachan's twin Titan stack
Heaved to the sky;

Or, boudoir-bred degenerate,
If ne'er he knew the nobler state,
The birk-clad brae, the roaring spate,
The tod's dark lair,
Too spiritless to grin at Fate
Or greatly care.

And better this, perhaps you'd say,
Than break his heart for yesterday,
Uneasy in the dreams that stray
Where lost trails stretch--
Well, he's my pity either way,
Poor little wretch!

* * * * *

HOW TO IMPROVE LONDON.

We were discussing London's needs. Each of us was suggesting some
long-felt want which most appealed to him or her.

Some had declared that what London chiefly wanted was a tube from
Victoria to Chelsea. Someone else said that what it chiefly wanted was a
glass roof over Bond Street and the chief shopping area. Someone else
said that what it chiefly wanted was perforated pavements to let the
rain through at once--and so on.

"What I want," said a pretty girl--so pretty that I almost got up and
set about providing her with it--"is a guide to the cinemas. I adore
cinemas, but there is no means of knowing what is on unless you go to
the place itself. Then very likely it's some stupid long play, with more
printed descriptions than deeds and more letters to read than people to
see. Now there ought to be a list of all the cinema programmes on sale
at the bookstalls, like _The Times_ and _Spectator_."

"Wouldn't you have a cinema critic too," someone asked, "like Mr.
Walkley, to say how the films amused him, and so on?"

"No, I don't want that," she said. "But I should like information as to
how long they were, and if they were American or Italian or French or
English, and I should like a star to be put against those which Mr.
Redford had not thought splendid."

When it came to my turn I said that London's most crying need was a
tailors' clearing-house.

"What on earth is that?" they asked.

"Well," I said, "I'll tell you. All men have tailors, and for the most
part they stick to them,