r the atmosphere resounded to that mighty empty swish;
His stick flew like a rocket, but, alas! the wo decreed!
The ball rolled two feet sickly, when it just lay doon and deed.

Oh, somewhere in our bonny land the pipes skirl all the day,
And somewhere lads and lassies shout, and men are passing gay;
But we are dour in Skibo, and no joy is hereabout,
Since the day when, like one Casey, our Maclaren foozled out.

_Denver Republican._

THE LOST GRIP.

It was a joy to be alive,
When I could always see
My golf-ball, from a slashing drive,
Go soaring off the tee;
When, as my lowered handicap
Fell ever nearer scratch,
I held my own with any chap
In medal play and match.

Then foozles never made me groan;
Then, gripping like a vise,
I swung my club; then all unknown
Were top and pull and slice;
Then all my deft approaches sped
Directly to their goal;
Then all my longest putts lay dead,
Or fell into the hole.

Oh! cruel Fate that bade me look,
On one ill-omened day,
Upon the pictures in the book
Of Vardon's hints on play!
For, though I quickly laid it by,
That one unlucky dip
Into its pages made me try
The overlapping grip.

Now all my fingers are like thumbs,
My club turns round and round;
And divots, as it downward comes,
Fly upward from the ground.
My golf-ball skips to right or left
A few short yards and stops;
Or, with its surface deeply cleft,
Into a bunker drops.

And though I swear and fume and fret,
My efforts are in vain;
And, what is worse, I cannot get
The old style back again.
So now with sighs and tears and frowns
I curse the diagrams
That cost me numberless half-crowns,
And ah! so many--regrettable comments.

_Punch._

THE WORLD'S GREAT OPERAS.

Wagner's Rienzi--No. 1.

This is the first of a series of articles upon the great operas of the
world offered to the readers of THE SCRAP BOOK. To the out-of-town
devotees the echoes from stageland sound only remotely as they are given
forth by the press. Moreover, the critics deal with the specific
production, not with the opera itself in relation to the history of music,
or the conceptions of the composers. It is our purpose in these articles
to look at the opera from a different point of view, and to gl