don't mind where they nest.

***

The eclipse of the sun on May 28th should be a great success, if we
may judge by the immense time it has taken over rehearsals.

***

Inspector J.G. OGHAM, chief of the Portsmouth Fire Brigade, who is
about to retire, has attended over two thousand fires. Indeed it is
said that most of the local fires know him by sight.

***

"Ghost stories," says a contemporary, "are being spread about vacant
houses in Dublin to decrease the demand for them." The old caretaker's
trick of training a couple of cockroaches to jump out at the
house-hunter is quite useless to-day.

***

Hull merchants complain that only one train leaves Hull per day
on which wet fish can travel. The idea of bringing the fish to
Billingsgate under their own steam has already been ventilated.

***

Found insensible with a bottle of sherry in his pocket, an East Ham
labourer was fined ten shillings for being drunk. It is believed that
had he been carrying the sherry anywhere else nothing could have saved
him.

***

An absconding Trade Society treasurer last week hit upon a novel idea.
He ran away with his own wife.

***

"Is nothing going to be done to stop the incursion of the sea at
Walton-on-the-Naze?" asks a contemporary. Have they tried the effect
of placing notice-boards along the front?

***

For the first time the public have been admitted to a meeting of the
Beckenham Council. It is pleasant to find that the importance of good
wholesome entertainment is not being lost sight of in some places.

***

Asked by the Wood Green magistrates for the names of his six children,
a defendant said that he did not know them. It is a good plan for a
man to get his wife to introduce him to the children.

***

It appears that a certain gentleman has managed to overcome the
domestic servant problem. He has married one.

***

A Salford man giving evidence in a local court told the magistrates
that his wife had repeatedly stuck pins into him. There is no excuse
for such conduct, even with pin-cushions at their present inflated
price.

***

No one seemed to take the rat-plague very seriously in the Isle of
Wight until last week, when several rodents were discovered at the
Seaplane Station at Bembridge busily engaged in trying on the pilots'
flying coats.

***

It is only fair to remark that, although the Gover