admirers of Mr. LLOYD GEORGE, who wished to present their hero with
something in the nature of a permanent peroration.

* * *

As a partial remedy for the overcrowding at Oxford, it is suggested
that the University should come into line with Battersea by making a
rule that lost causes will not be kept longer than three days before
being destroyed.

* * *

"I was the anonymous person who walked down Harley Street and counted
the number of open windows," confesses Sir ST. CLAIR THOMSON, M.D. So
now we can concentrate on JUNIUS and the Man in the Iron Mask.

* * *
Motorists are becoming much more polite, we read. They now catch
pedestrians sideways, instead of full on.

* * *

According to an official of the R.S.P.C.A., as _Punch_ informed us
last week, dogs do not possess suicidal tendencies. Yet the other day
we saw an over-fed poodle deliberately loitering outside a sausage
factory.

* * *

"The number of curates who seem to be able to find plenty of time
for golf is most surprising," writes a correspondent. We suppose the
majority of them employ vicars.

* * *

Spanish toreadors are on strike for a higher wage. There is talk, we
understand, of a six bull week.

* * * * *

[Illustration: "WHAT IS YOUR LITTLE BROTHER CRYING ABOUT?" "OH,
'IM--'E'S A REG'LAR PESSIMIST, 'E IS."]

* * * * *

THE DARK AGES.

(_Being reflections on the pre-press period._)

[In _The Times_ of December 2nd Lord NORTHCLIFFE traces the
history of the English Press from the appearance of the first
newspaper uttered in English--"A Corrant out of Germany,"
imprinted at Amsterdam, December 2nd, 1620--and finds some
difficulty in understanding how civilisation got on as well as it
did through all those preceding centuries.]

To-day (December 2) we keep, with cheers,
The Tercentenary of the Press!
Probing the darkness of the previous years
I try, but try in vain, to guess
How anybody lived before the birth
Of this the Very Greatest Thing on Earth.

You'd say it must have been a savage life.
Men were content to eat and drink
And spend the intervals in carnal strife
With none to teach them how to think;
They had no Vision and their minds were dense,
Largely for lack of True "Intelligence."

When a volcano burst or floods occurred
No correspondent flashed t