To rehabilitate our cock-shy stands!"

In vain Aunt Sarah with her spinster vows
Entreats the Cockney sport to try his skill;
Her charms are languishing, but nuts shall rouse
To sterner combats and with damper brows
For 'Arriet's kindly glances 'Erb and Bill.

"And ah, the little ones! With how much glee
Their eyes shall gaze upon the oily fruit!
I shall behold them scamper o'er the lea,
Their warm young lips, in part from ecstasy,
In part from palatable nut-meat, mute."

Such was the man, I said, and praised the worth
Of all who make the cocoanut their ploy;
And thought, "I too will have a round of mirth,"
And threw--and brought one hairy globe to earth.
And, turning round, beheld a ragged boy.

So smirched he was, so pitiful a lad
That when I saw the teardrop in his eye
I gave the nut to him. It made him glad;
He took it proudly off to show his dad--
His dad was the conductor of the shy.

EVOE.

* * * * *

The Latest Cinema Poster.

"WANTED BY THE POLICE,
4,200 feet."

In any other profession they advertise for hands. It is a pleasant
distinction.

* * * * *

From a circus advertisement in India:--

"It gives a great pleasure to all to see a goat, (1) riding on
another goat, (2) placing its neck against the neck of the other,
(3) walking on its knees, (4) pretending to lie dead, and many other
feats of men."

For the moment we cannot remember to have performed any of these manly
feats.

* * * * *

ARMAGEDDON.

The conversation had turned, as it always does in the smoking-rooms of
golf clubs, to the state of poor old England, and Porkins had summed the
matter up. He had marched round in ninety-seven that morning, followed
by a small child with an umbrella and an arsenal of weapons, and he felt
in form with himself.

"What England wants," he said, leaning back, and puffing at his
cigar,--"what England wants is a war. (Another whisky and soda, waiter.)
We're getting flabby. All this pampering of the poor is playing the very
deuce with the country. A bit of a scrap with a foreign power would do
us all the good in the world." He disposed of his whisky at a draught.
"We're flabby," he repeated. "The lower classes seem to have no sense of
discipline nowadays. We want a war to brace us up."

* * * *