for a day, but scarce for a year.
A Puck-like sprite it may please to see
"All things befall preposterously."
But pure perversity soon out-pegs,
GRANDOLPH, "as sure as eggs is eggs!"

* * * * *

ALL THROUGH LONDON FOR A SHILLING.--The Fine Art Society in Bond Street,
has a marvellous exhibition in the London-pictures by HERBERT
MARSHALL--he ought to be called for ever afterwards the City
Marshall--so well does he understand all moods of our great city, so
admirably can he translate every phase of its atmosphere, and each
subtlety of its colour. Just a hundred pictures this clever artist
shows, and everyone is a portrait of an old friend. This Gallery is the
very place to take country cousins to. Just turn them loose here for a
couple of hours, and they will get a better idea of what London is
really like, than if they stopped in the Metropolis for a month.

* * * * *

[Illustration: A TRUE VOCATION.

_She (after many vain attempts at conversation)._ "AND IS THERE _NO_
SUBJECT IN WHICH YOU TAKE AN INTEREST?"

_He._ "YES. CRIMINAL LAW!"]

* * * * *

NAVAL INTELLIGENCE.

(_Not without a Precedent._)

Yesterday Her Majesty's First Class Battle-ship _Blunderer_, her
extensive repairs having been nearly completed, received her full
complement of men and stores, and proceeded up Channel, to try her two
strengthened but bent old muzzle-loading 79-ton guns, ringed and bound
on a new principle. Some apprehension was expressed that the discharge
might, owing to her high free-board, possibly do some serious damage to
her hull--a fear which happened to be only too well founded; for though
fired at an elevation of 97, the first shot carried away the davits,
forecastle, bridge, life-boats, gunwale companion and larboard
marling-spike, the water pouring in, literally in volumes, through the
shrouds, and rapidly extinguishing the fires. Further progress being
difficult under the circumstances, the Captain, acting under the advice
of the Civil Experimental Director of the Admiralty, thought it unwise
to continue the test without a farther thorough overhauling of the ship,
and she was in the course of the afternoon towed back once again to the
repairing-yard. No astonishment was expressed at the result of the
experiment. It is satisfactory to know that it is estimated roughly that
the cost of the damage effected by the one te