ies have been failures.
In many a Grand Stand nerves have gone to pieces. Undoubtedly this grave
news from the North Sea is the explanation. What can one expect when there
are no shrimps for tea?

For the eating of shrimps is more than a mere assimilation of nourishment,
more even than the consumption of an article of diet which is beneficial to
brain tissues and nerve centres. After all, the oyster or the haddock
serves equally well for those purposes.

But before one eats a shrimp a certain deftness and delicacy of
manipulation are needed to effect the neat extraction of the creature from
its unpalatable cuticle. Not so with the haddock.

Shrimp-eating is something more than table deportment; it is a test of
_sangfroid_ and _savoir faire_, qualities so necessary to the welfare of
the nation. The man who can efficiently prepare shrimps for seemly
consumption, chatting brightly the while with his fair neighbour and
showing neither mental nor physical distress, can be relied upon to comport
himself with efficiency whether in commerce or statecraft.

Watch a man swallow an oyster, and how much more do you know of him after
the operation than you knew before? But put him in a Marchioness's
drawing-room and set a shrimp before him, and the manner in which he
tackles the task will reveal the sort of stuff he is made of.

The shrimp test is one before which physically strong men have broken down,
while the seemingly weak have displayed amazing fortitude.

In these days, when it behoves every man among us to be at his best, we
view this famine in shrimps with grave concern, and we trust that the Board
of Agriculture and Fisheries is alive to the significance of this crisis.

* * * * *

PUBLISHER'S COLUMN.

"Colonel Repington's Diary.

NEW BOOKS.
The Revelation of St. John.

NEW FICTION.
The Autobiography of Judas Iscariot."--_Scotch Paper._

And MARGOT next week.

* * * * *

RAINY MORNING.

As I was walking in the rain
I met a fairy down a lane.
We walked along the road together;
I soon forgot about the weather.
He told me lots of lovely things:
The story that the robin sings,
And where the rabbits go to school,
And how to know a fairy pool,
And what to say and what to do
If bogles ever bother you.

The flowers peeped from hedgy places
And shook the raindrops from their faces,
And