ss of bank-notes. I was so carried away with pleasure
that I was quite surprised to hear his voice returning from a distance.

"As for my ticket," he continued, "that is a single from Wallingford to the
next station, Sadlington; it is two years old. My season I keep inside the
lining of my hat."

It was here that I returned the ticket to his pocket. After all, I
reflected, I could pay at the other end with a very small portion of the
contents of the pocket-book, which I reckoned must contain at least
half-a-dozen fivers.

"By the way," he added, "I have a passion for biscuits; will you join me in
one?" and he proffered a small tin. "I eat so many of them," he said, "that
I can write all my memoranda on the slips of paper from the tins, and these
I keep in my pocket-book. My money I keep next my season."

It was here that I returned the pocket-book.

* * * * *

"THE OPTIMISTIC WAITERS.

'SOON WE SHALL GO BARK TO OUR WORK TRIUMPHANTLY.'"--_Evening Paper._

We hope that in the case of certain restaurants the bark will not be so bad
as the bite.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Mabel_ (_who has something in her eye_). "IT'S STILL VERY
SORE, MUMMY. SHALL I GARGLE IT?"]

* * * * *

THE DEAD TREE.

(_Being a terrible result of reading too much poetry in the modern
manner._)

Slushy is the highway between the unspeakable hedges;
I pause
Irresolute under a telegraph-pole,
The fourteenth telegraph-pole on the way
From Shere to Havering,
The twenty-first
From Havering to Shere.

Crimson is the western sky; upright it stands,
The solitary pole,
Sombre and terrible,
Splitting the dying sun
Into two semi-circular halves.
I do not think I have seen, not even in Vorticist pictures,
Anything so solitary,
So absolutely nude;
Yet this was an item once in the uninteresting forest,
With branches sticking out of it, and crude green leaves
And resinous sap,
And underneath it a litter of pine spindles
And ants;
Birds fretted in the boughs and bees were busy in it,
Squirrels ran noisily up it;
Now it is naked and dead,
Delightfully naked
And beautifully dead.

Delightfully and beautifully, for across it melodiously,
Stirred by the evening wind,
The wires where electric messages are continually being despatched
Between various post-offices,
Messages of bu