'long to each other."

* * * * *

"'The Heart of a Child,'" I said; "the beautifullest love-story ever
told. Featuring Little Randolph, the Boy Wonder."

They took no notice. They were all three busy rehearsing the final
reconciliation scene.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _The Wife._ "MUST WE ALWAYS 'AVE CHAMPAGNE, 'ARRY? IT
DON'T REELY SUIT ME."

_The Profiteer._ "OF COURSE WE MUST. THEY MIGHT THINK WE COULDN'T
AFFORD IT."]

* * * * *

Our Erudite Contemporaries.

From a special golf correspondent:--

"I cannot remember the Latin for a daisy, but most
emphatically 'Delanda est.'"

_Daily Paper._

O Carthego!

"'Pol-u-me-tis.' The Greek brings back the thundrous verse of
Virgil. Echoes from the twilight of the gods."--_Daily Paper._

Poor old Goetterdaemmerung.

* * * * *

Another Sex-Problem.

"White Milking Shorthorn Bull for Sale, L50."--_Farmers'
Gazette._

* * * * *

"A Good Canvasser wanted for Credit Gentlemen's wear; ready to
wear and made to measure clothing."--_Daily Paper._

"One," in fact, "that was made a shape for his clothes, and, if ADAM
had not fallen, had lived to no purpose."

* * * * *

"To-morrow afternoon, the Dansant, 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Tickets
inclusive 3s. 6d. Dansant (only) 2s. 6d."--_Provincial Paper._

The "the" seems cheap at a shilling.

* * * * *

THE ART OF POETRY.

II.

In this lecture I propose to explain how comic poetry is written.

Comic poetry, as I think I pointed out in my last lecture, is much
more difficult than serious poetry, because there are all sorts of
rules. In serious poetry there are practically no rules, and what
rules there are may be shattered with impunity as soon as they become
at all inconvenient. Rhyme, for instance. A well-known Irish poet once
wrote a poem which ran like this:

"Hands, do as you're bid,
Draw the balloon of the mind
That bellies and sags in the wind
Into its narrow shed."

This was printed in a serious paper; but if the poet had sent it up
to a humorous paper (as he might well have done) the Editor would have
said, "Do you pronounce it _shid_?", and the poet would have had
no answer. You see, he started out, as serious poets do, with every
in