t University examination paper:--

"Three persons have four coats, five vests and six hats between them.
In how many different ways can they dress themselves with them?"

A problem for the coming Clothes Controller.

* * * * *

[Illustration: "FASTER? NO, I AIN'T GOIN' NO FASTER, YOUNG 'IGH VELOCITY. I
AIN'T GOT BUT TWO SPEEDS, SLOW AND STOP."]

* * * * *

THE FOOD OF LOVE.

A LYRIC OF MEATLESS DAYS.

Eat to me only with thine eyes
And I will munch with mine;
Or let my lips but brush thy locks
And I shall seem to dine;
The hollow 'neath my belt that lies
For flesh of beeves doth pine;
Yet, might I wolf a roasted ox,
I would, of course, decline.

I sent thee once a juicy steak
To prove thy troth and see
If in that stern ordeal's test
Stedfast thou still wouldst be;
And thou thereof one sniff didst take
And post it back to me,
Since when I wear it next my chest,
Potted, for love of thee.

O.S.

* * * * *

A NATIONAL SKY-SCRAPER.

I have been often asked why the Government, foreseeing the inevitable
increase of Departments, had not the elementary imagination to build a
colossal sky-scraper to accommodate them all.

The objections to such an act of apparently obvious intelligence may be
briefly enumerated.

(1) With such a landmark whoever had business to conduct with a Government
Department would know where to find it, for which reason alone the system
of huts and hotels is to be preferred. The hotels are widely scattered and
the huts hidden away in odd corners of public gardens and parks, and even
in the bed of a lake. By the use of motor-cars (petrol being for official
and not for private consumption) such co-operation as cannot be avoided
between Departments is assured.

(2) Even in a single Department too close co-operation is not desirable. An
hotel, divided into hundreds of small rooms and flats, enables the occupant
of each room to be isolated, and each self-contained flat to have almost
the status of a sub-department. Thus the vexatious supervision, the easy
intercourse and rapid decision which are so disturbing to official routine
are avoided.

(3) The express elevators, by which the visitor is shot up to the higher
storeys of a sky-scraper, would suggest a certain directness and celerity
in official methods that is calculated to arouse fa