es to add nex week.

ROBERT.

* * * * *

QUEER QUERIES.--A FIRST READING.--Would some person kindly inform
me of a good Recitation for a Smoking Concert? I have been asked to
recite "something telling" after the annual banquet of a Club of local
Licensed Victuallers. I am thinking of the First Book of _Paradise
Lost_. Or would parts of _The Excursion_ be more likely to create
a _furore_? I have never recited in public before, and feel rather
doubtful of my ability to "hold" the Victuallers.--WILLING TO OBLIGE.

* * * * *

[Illustration: GENTLE SATIRE.

"I SAY, BILL, LOOK 'ERE! 'ERE'S A OLD COVE OUT RECORD-BREAKING!"]

* * * * *

"THE DILEMMA."

(_An old Irish Story newly applied._)

["On which horn of the dilemma will the Gladstonians elect
to stand?"--_Mr. Chamberlain, in his controversy with Sir
W. Harcourt on the place of Home Rule in the Gladstonian
programme._]

_Faithful Unionist Sentry, loquitur_:--

Faith! yes, a dilemma, no doubt, is _the_ thing
To stagger Big Bounce, in a fashion Socratic.
I fancy I know now to plant a sharp sting,
The success of my bayonet-play is emphatic.
Remember a picture I once chanced to see,
A Pompeian sentinel posed at a portal,
And "faithful to death" though fire threatened. That's Me!
As my country's defender, my fame is immortal.

Yes, the Sentinel's _role_ suits my style passing well;
The enemy won't find me napping or nodding.
But what I _most_ like as I do sentry spell,
Is the fine opportunity offered for--prodding!
I watch like a lynx, as a sentry should do,
With an eye like a hawk, and a smile sweet as syrup;
But when there's a chance for 'a thrust--whirraroo!
My bayonet-point is agog for a stir up!
JOE, the Sentry, you know, like _Joe Bagstock_, is sly,
Ay, "devilish sly,"--if I may speak profanely.
That swashbuckler H-RC-RT now, swaggering there--why,
The big burly Bobadil's acting insanely.
I _do_ like to draw him. These ramparts are mine,
But because we're old comrades he cheeks me. "Woa, EMMA!"
As cads used to shout. I extremely incline
To tickle him up with--a two-horned Dilemma!

"Well, WILLIAM, what cheer?" He is struggling out there
With a--Snark; 'tis a Boojum which shortly may vanish.
Like _Frankenstein's_, his is a Monster, I fear,
He would--did he da