weet and simple, scornful cynic soul might win,
While a most bewitching dimple guards the fascinating chin.

Teeth the purest pearl outshining, shell-pink nails, and she will wear
Just one red camellia twining in her ebon wealth of hair.

Jet looks grey beside her tresses blacker than the murk midnight,
While the little hand that presses each coquettish curl shines white.

She is quite an _avis rara_, but her lips for me were dumb,
Though she murmured, "_Sayonara_," and again should bid me come.

If her fairy ears I frighten with the wild words of the West,
Surely love will come to lighten all the burden of my breast.

I will learn her awful lingo, if by any chance I can;
I'll despoil the gay flamingo to provide her with a fan.

She will note my admiration, smiling in a sweet surprise,
And there _can_ be conversation lovers learn 'twixt eyes and eyes.

Come what will, methinks I'll chance it, and for pretty things to say,
I will read up, during transit, all _The Light of Asia_.

Since, Sir EDWIN, dainty dreamer, thine the pen that bids me go,
By the fastest train and steamer, straightway off to Tokio.

* * * * *

THE LION'S DIARY.

Bother being caged up in this wooden box along with a boar-hound. Why a
boar-hound? Is he supposed to look after me? I rather like that, if he
is. "Look after _me_?" Why just with one touch of one of my forepaws I
could smash him in half a minute like two-twos. And for the matter of
that, that fellow with the whip, who imagines he keeps me in order, by
fixing his eye on me. Yes, and the horse too; the whole three of them.
But there's that bit of meat at the end of the performance, so I suppose
I may as well appear "to come the docile highly trained beast," and go
through with the tomfoolery and collar it. "Snarl?" _Do_ I? Of course I
do. It's the one outlet I have for my feelings. Who wouldn't snarl under
the circumstances? Fancy, me, the "King of Beasts" (it sounds like
chaff), dropping off a platform, at a given signal, on to the back of an
idiotic circus-horse, stared at through a lot of bars by a house packed
full of applauding fools! And we finish up by a scamper all round
together that seems vastly to amuse them! What a come-down for a Lion!
Learned pigs and educated bears are well enough, but they should know
where to draw the line and stop at the "Monarch." I keep pretty quiet at
present because it pays, but t