lect,
And arts of suasion left him tired,
He took to action more direct;
Scaring her with a savage whoop or
Putting his club across her head,
He bore her in a state of stupor
Home to his stony bridal bed.

In ages rather more refined,
Gentlemen of the King's highway,
Whose democratic tastes inclined
To easy hours and ample pay,
Would hardly ever hold their victim
Engaged in academic strife,
But raised their blunderbuss and ticked him
Off with "Your money or your life."

So when your miners, swift to scout
The use of reason's slow appeal,
Threaten to starve our children out
And bring the country in to heel,
There's nothing, as I understand it,
So very new in this to show;
The cave-man and the cross-roads bandit
Were there before them long ago.

O.S.

* * * * *

FAIR WEAR AND TEAR.

In a short time now we shall have to return this flat to its proper
tenants and arrive at some assessment of the damage done to their
effects. With regard to the other rooms, even the room which Richard
and Priscilla condescend to use as a nursery, I shall accept the
owners' estimate cheerfully enough, I think; but the case of the
drawing-room furniture is different. About the nursery I have
only heard vague rumours, but in the drawing-room I have been an
eye-witness of the facts.

The proper tenant is a bachelor who lived here with his sister; he
will scarcely realise, therefore, what happens at 5 P.M. every day,
when there comes, as the satiric poet, LONGFELLOW, has so finely
sung--

"A pause in the day's occupations,
Which is known as the children's hour."

Drawing-room furniture indeed! When one considers the buildings and
munition dumps, the live and rolling stock, the jungles and forests
in that half-charted territory; when one considers that even the
mere wastepaper basket by the writing-desk (and it _does_ look a bit
battered, that wastepaper basket) is sometimes the tin helmet under
which Richard defies the frightfulness of LARS PORSENA, and sometimes
a necessary stage property for Priscilla's two favourite dramatic
recitations

"He plunged with a delighted _scweam_
Into a bowl of clotted cweam,"

and

"This is Mr. Piggy Wee,
With tail so pink and curly,
And when I say, 'Good mornin', pig,'
He answers _vewwy_ surly,
Oomph! Oomph!'"

and sometimes the hutch that harbours