with censure blending?

Is he ploughing, is he hoeing?
Is he planting beet, or going
In for early 'tato-growing?

Is he writing verse or prosing,
Or intent upon disclosing
Gifts for musical composing?

Is he lecturing to flappers?
Is he tunnelling with sappers?
Has he joined the U-boat trappers?

Or, to petrify recorders
Of events within our borders,
_Has he taken Holy Orders?_

Is he well or ill or middling?
Is he fighting, is he fiddling?--
He can't only be thumb-twiddling.

These are merely dim surmises,
But experience advises
Us to look for weird surprises,
Somersaults, and strange disguises.

* * * * *

Thus we summed the situation
When Sir HEDWORTH MEUX' oration
Brought about a transformation.

Lo! the Blenheim Boanerges
On a sudden re-emerges
And, to calm the naval _gurges_,
FISHER'S restoration urges.

* * * * *

A Work of Supererogation.

"At an interval in the evening some carols were sung by members of our
G.F.S., and a collection was taken on behalf of a fund for providing
Huns for our soldiers."--_Parish Magazine_.

* * * * *

INFORMATION WANTED.

No one can answer the question, and I have not the pluck--being a
law-abiding citizen--to try for myself. But I do so want to know. I ask
everyone. I ask my partners at dinner (when any dinner comes my way). I ask
casual acquaintances. I would ask the officials themselves, only they are
so preoccupied. But the words certainly set up a very engrossing problem,
and upon this problem many minor problems depend, clustering round it like
chickens round the maternal hen. But I should be quite content with an
answer only to the hen; the rest could wait. Yet there is an
inter-dependence between them that cannot be overlooked. For example, did
someone once do it and meet with such a calamity that everyone else had to
be warned? Or is it merely that the authorities dislike us to be comfy? Or
is it thought that the public might get so much attracted by the habit as
to convert the place into a house where a dance is in progress? I wish I
knew these things.

Will not some Member ask for information in the House, and then--arising
out of this question--get all the other subsidiary facts? We are told so
many things that don't matter, such as the enormous number of Ministers in
the new Governmen