Like TICKLER, on Ambrosian nights,
I have consumed them by the score.
And still, whenever you appeared,
My pride it was to use you well;
I let the juice play round your beard,
And always on the hollow shell.

I placed you in the fair lark-pie.
With steak and kidneys too, of course;
Your ancestors were glad to die,
So well I made the oyster sauce.
I had you stewed and featly fried,
And dipped in batter--think of that;
And, as a pleasant change, I've tried
You, skewered in rows, with bacon-fat.

"Where art thou, ALICE?" cried the bard.
"Where art thou, Oyster?" I exclaim.
It really is extremely hard,
To know thee nothing but a name.
For this is surely torment worse
Than DANTE heaped upon his dead;--
To find thee quite beyond my purse,
And so go oysterless to bed.

* * * * *

_A PROPOS_ OF THE SECRETARY FOR WAR'S ROSEATE AFTER--DINNER
SPEECH (_on the entirely satisfactory state of the Army
generally_).--(STAN-)"HOPE told a flattering tale."

* * * * *

UNIVERSITY MEM.--The Dean of Christ Church will keep his seat till
Christmas, and just a LIDDELL longer.

* * * * *

THE RAVEN.

(_Very Latest War-Office Version. See Mr. Stanhope's After-Dinner
Speech at the Holborn Restaurant (Oct. 17), and Letter in "Times"
(Oct. 21) on "Pangloss at the War Office."_)

[Illustration]

_Secretarial Pangloss sings:_--

Late, upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, tired but cheery,
Over many an optimistic record of War Office lore;
Whilst I worked, assorting, mapping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone rudely rapping, rapping at my Office-door.
"Some late messenger," I muttered, "tapping at my Office-door--
Only this, but it's a bore."

I remember--being sober--it was in the chill October,
Light from the electric globe or horseshoe lighted wall and floor;
Also that it was the morrow of the Holborn Banquet; sorrow
From the Blue Books croakers borrow--sorrow for the days of yore,
For the days when "_Rule Britannia_" sounded far o'er sea and shore.
Ah! it _must_ have been a bore!

But on that let's draw the curtain. I am simply cock-sure--certain
That "our splendid little Army" never was so fine before.
It will take a lot of beating! Such remarks I keep repeating;
They come handy--after eating,