irst-class compartment in a train on the Chertsey line. Several
mothers have written to congratulate her upon her courageous and
unconventional protest against the fifty per cent. increase in railway
fares.

***

A Glasgow woman has been fined a guinea for trying to enlist in the
Irish Guards. Only the Scottish Courts carry pride of race to these
absurd lengths.

***

It is announced that the recent increase in the price of bacon was
sanctioned by the FOOD CONTROLLER. The news has given great satisfaction
to law-abiding consumers, who bitterly resented the unauthorised
increases (upon which this is a further increase) that were made under
the old _regime_.

***

A dress made from banana skins is now being exhibited in London. It is,
we believe, a _neglige_ costume, the sort of thing one can slip on at
any time.

***

"If you had let the boy eat it, it would have punished him a great deal
more than I can," said the North London magistrate to a man who was
prosecuting a boy for stealing an unripe pear. It is a splendid tribute
to the humanity of our stipendiary magistrates that the heroic offer of
the boy to accept the greater punishment was promptly refused.

***

A workman at Kinlochleven, Argyllshire, found a live crab in a pocket of
sand at a depth of more than ten feet. On being taken to the
police-station and shown the "All Clear" notice the cautious crustacean
consented to go straight home.

***

At a flower-day sale at Grimsby one thousand pounds was paid by a local
shipowner for a blue periwinkle. In recognition of his generosity no
charge was made for the pin.

***

A Vienna telegram states that the Emperor KARL has handed the Grand
Cross of St. Stephen to the GERMAN CHANCELLOR. The latter quite rightly
protests that Herr BETHMANN-HOLLWEG is the real culprit.

***

From Scotland comes the news that an inmate of a workhouse has received
an income-tax form to fill in. This is considered to be but a foretaste
of the time when all income-tax papers will have to be addressed to the
workhouses.

* * * * *

In a Gloucester meadow, Lieutenant JAGGARD has picked a mushroom
weighing ten ounces and measuring twenty-seven inches in circumference.
Eyewitnesses describe the gallant officer's enveloping movement as a
really brilliant piece of single-handed work.

***

The Prussian Military Press Bureau, among its other fantasies, has
discovered with horror that C