oads be up in May?
Who muddles matters in this way,
With bungling blunder?

What use to make a shapeless space,
Where rambling roadways interlace,
And, in the Season,
To close just what was meant to save
This block, because they want to pave?
What is the reason?

By Jove, it's like some years ago,
The traffic stopping in a row
In Piccadilly!
The Vestry does not care a pin
For all the muddle that we're in;
They're much too silly.

Perhaps they'd say they meant it well.
I do not know. All I can tell
Is that I'm raving.
I'd send that Vestry down below,
Where all such good intentions go,
To make more paving!

* * * * *

FAIR TRADERS.

Lady friend of my wife's wants us to "try her tea"! Seems she's
started (with two other Ladies) as Firm of Tea Merchants in City. What
_are_ we coming to? Or rather, what are male Tea Merchants coming to?
Mr. Registrar BROUGHAM, most likely. In incautious moment--as I was
out--wife promised to give her an order for a couple of pounds of her
"best Ceylon Mixture."

Tried it. Never tasted such vile stuff! Wife agrees, and asks me to
call at the Firm's Offices and see if they haven't got anything with
more Ceylon and less Mixture in it. Don't much like the job. How
can one blow up a woman whom one will have to meet in one's own
drawing-room, calling?

Have looked in. Must say that Tea-dealeress is better than her
tea. Really quite an attractive person. The three of them gave me
afternoon tea in a little sanctum behind the shop, and chatted _most_
pleasantly. My wife's friend the head of Firm. Said the Ceylon Mixture
was a mistake--really intended for kitchen use--but as they've only
just started business, their stocks have got jumbled together. She
hoped--quite penitently--that I would "overlook the error."

What _could_ I say? What I _did_ was to order a whole box of their
"Incomparable Congou," at four shillings a pound.

Wife (when I tell her of this) seems surprised. Says "she won't
send _me_ shopping again." But can one call this cosy--this
tea-cosy--social visit to three accomplished women by the vulgar
term "shopping "?

Wife incautiously mentions that she is "out of Coffee." Gives me an
excuse to call on Firm again, and see if they sell Coffee too. Yes,
they do. Head of Firm more fascinating than ever. Asks me "if I
would mind, as a very gr