ng lad when the wintry winds do blow.

Thine, _de profundis_ PATLANDER.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Mistress._ "WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO OUT THIS AFTERNOON,
MABEL?"

_Mabel._ "I _AM_ GOING OUT."]

* * * * *

Rhymes of Unrest.

There was a young miner of Ayr
Who gave himself up to despair;
For he said, "If we're paid
On our 'get,' I'm afraid
That I canna ca' canny no mair."

"Strike while the iron is hot,"
Said the wise old saw of old;
But the miners say, "What rot!
Strike while the weather's cold."

* * * * *

"The art of decoration is alien to painting in this--that you must
mix your colours with your brains."--_Daily Paper._

We await a reply from the intellectuals of Chelsea.

* * * * *

"There is one building now being erected, within a few miles of
Manchester as the cock crows."--_Provincial Paper._

We are unfamiliar with this method of mensuration.

* * * * *

ABOUT CONFERENCES.

WE may not have coal, but we can have conferences. A conference is the
most typically English thing that there is. The old Anglo-Saxons had
them and called them moots. Why they called them a silly name like that,
when "conferences" would have done just as well, one can't imagine; but
they had their notions and stuck to them. They would have called
Parliament a moot; in fact they did. They called it a moot of wise men.
Sarcastic beggars, these Anglo-Saxons!

The advantages of having a conference about everything are almost too
numerous to explain. For one thing, suppose Smith is coming to see you
at 2.30 P.M. "It's no use his waiting now," you say. "I've got a
conference at 3. Tell him to come back at 5.30." And when he comes back
at 5.30 of course the conference is still going on, so you don't have to
see him at all.

There is nothing again that makes you feel so deliciously important as
being at a conference. You may be a leader of quite an insignificant
body of workers, like the Nutcracker-Teeth Makers' Union, but you rub
shoulders at a conference with men whose names are a household word
throughout the whole of Great Britain, amongst those who have houses.
The distinguished and the undistinguished lay their heads together; the
spat-wearing get their feet mixed with the non-spat-wearing; though
there