* * * * *

"Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson said there were, in certain places,
some forms of light entertainments which, to say the least, wanted
carefully watching."--_Daily Paper_.

At present, we gather, the wrong people do the watching.

* * * * *

[Illustration: SING A SONG OF DRACHMAS.

(_TINO AT ATHENS._)

THE KING WAS IN HIS COUNTING-HOUSE LOOKING FOR HIS MONEY.]

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Man of Wealth_ (_to his son just home for the
holidays_). "AND WHY DON'T YOU LIKE YOUR FUR COAT? I'LL BET NONE OF
THE OTHER BOYS 'AVE GOT ONE."

_Son._ "YES, BUT NONE OF THE OTHER BOYS HAVE TO BE CALLED 'SKUNKY.'"]

* * * * *

THOUGHTS IN A COLD SNAP.

It is going to be very cold when I get up, which will be almost
immediately--very cold indeed. It was zero yesterday; it may be below
the line to-day, twenty or thirty below the line--even more. A
little slam, perhaps, in spades. There are icicles hanging from the
window-frame; and it is a curious thing, when one comes to think of
it, what a lot of things there are that rhyme with icicle: tricycle,
bicycle, phthisical, psychical--no, I am wrong, not psychical ...

Anyhow, it is going to be very cold. Some people do not mind the cold.
There are people bathing in the Serpentine at this moment, I suppose,
and apparently nothing can be done about it. They ju-just break the
ice and ju-jump in. And yet it is not their ice; it is the KING'S.
It seems to me that it ought to be made illegal, this breaking of
the KING's ice, like the breaking of windows in Whitehall. These
ice-breakers seem to me as bad as the people who say, "It's going to
be a nice old-fashioned Christmas, with Yule-logs and things." Not
that I object to Yule-logs. I have some in my own Yule-shed, hand-sawn
by myself, though I am not a good hand-sawyer. When I get about
halfway through, the saw begins to gnash its teeth and groan at me.
It seems to me that what is wanted is a machine for turning the logs
round and round while one holds the saw steady. But there is something
beautiful in burning the Yule-logs of one's own fashioning that makes
one feel like the sculptor when at last the living beauty has burst
forth under his chisel from the shapeless stone. Besides, they are
cheaper than coal.

As I say, when people talk of "Yule-logs and things," it is not the
Yule-lo