uite exact
May be food for questioning;
But, as it's a painful fact
That your membrane is attacked
Thus about the prime of Spring,
I, who hold your welfare dear,
May not leave it with a sneer.

Wherefore, much though I aspire
You, and you alone, to please,
I refrain from this desire,
For 'twould set my heart on fire
If I made my lady wheeze;
I should well-nigh perish if
Aught from me should rouse a sniff.

Dum-Dum.

* * * * *

"In connection with the daily service at St. Enoch's Parish
Church, it would be possible to have marriage celebrated at two
o'clock on any particular week-day. That meant that in ordinary
circumstances it would be possible to have marriage celebrated
in St. Enoch's Church at two o'clock on any week day."--_Glasgow
Evening Times._

Left to ourselves, we were just arriving at the same conclusion.

* * * * *

"Captain W. M. Turner joined Freeman, and played the best
cricket of the day. He bit hard on the off-side."--_Daily
Telegraph._

We always move to the leg side of the field when Captain Turner comes
in.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Mr. Brown._ "Yes, this civil war business in Ireland is
terrible--terrible--but, good heavens, Maria, why isn't there any onion
sauce?"]

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"The Dangerous Age."

[Illustration: _Distracted Mother (at the top of her voice, outside sick
son's room)._ "He won't die! Tell me he won't die!"

_Author of Play._ "No, he won't die, because this is a 'happy ending'
play, but the noise that goes on outside his room would kill him in
ordinary life."

_Betty Dunbar_ Miss Eva Moore.
_Sir Egbert Englefield_ Mr. H. V. Esmond.]

When there is a good deal of talk on the stage about a certain
character, who however remains "off" throughout the play and gives you
no chance to discover for yourself what he is like, then I have an
instinctive distrust of him. If his name is as bad as _Cecil_ he is
practically doomed. _Betty Dunbar_, widow, ran away from her rich
sister's house and spent a night in London with such a _Cecil_. _Betty_
had arrived at the dangerous age of forty, and was temporarily and
ridiculously in love with this young bounder (as I felt him to be) of
twenty-two. But the fact that, at the very time when she was thus