Dec. 31st, 1915._

Unless, as we all hope, Tommy is at home again before that.

* * * * *

Another Crisis Averted.

"Our London Correspondent says that he has offered to resign,
but the Prime Minister refused to accept his resignation."

_Cork Examiner._

* * * * *

MY BIRTHDAY.

"My birthday," I said, "is setting in with its usual severity."

"What," said Francesca, "has driven you to this terrible conclusion?"

"Little signs; straws showing how the wind blows."

"I wonder," she said, "how that came to be a proverb. Personally I don't
keep packets of straws to test the wind by, and I never met anybody else
who did. Handkerchiefs are much more certain, and men's hats are best of
all."

"Yes," I said, "when I see my hat starting full tilt on an excursion I
always know which way the wind is blowing right enough. Tell me,
Francesca, why does a man's hat, when it's blown off, always bring up in
a puddle?"

"And get run over by a butcher's cart?"

"And why does everybody laugh at the hat's owner?"

"And why does the boy who brings it back to you expect payment for the
miserable and useless object?"

"And where," I said, "does the owner disappear to afterwards? You never
see a man with a hat on his head that's been run over--no, I mean, with
a hat that's been run over on his head--no, no, I mean, with a hat
that's been run over off his head--Francesca, I give it up; I shall
never get that sentence right, but you know what I mean. Anyhow I will
put the dreadful vision by. What was I talking about when this hat
calamity broke in?"

"You had made," said Francesca, "a cold and distant allusion to your
birthday. It's coming to-morrow."

"Well," I said, "it can come if it likes, but I shall refuse to receive
it. I don't want it. I'm quite old enough without it. At my age people
don't have birthdays. They just go on living, and other people say how
wonderful they are for their years, and they must be sixty if they're a
day, but nobody would think so, and----"

"And that it's all due to early rising and regular habits."

"And smoking and partial abstemiousness."

"And general good conduct. But you can have all that sort of praise and
yet celebrate your birthday."

"But I tell you I won't have my birthday celebrated. Those are my
orders."

"Orders?" she said. "People don't give orders about absurdities like
that."

"Yes," I said,