n about town."]

If perchance you would gaze upon those whose array's
Of impeccable texture and cut,
It is futile to go to Pall Mall or the Row,
Now the haunt of the second-rate nut;
Take a train (G.N.R.), for example, as far
As Cleckheaton or Cleethorpes-on-Sea,
Where each male that you meet, from his head to his feet,
Follows Fashion's most recent decree.

A legitimate claim to sartorial fame
Can be made by the locals at Leek,
Whose apparel is apt to be ruthlessly scrapped
After having been worn for a week;
Trousers bag at the knees in no town on the Tees,
And the Londoner has to admit
That he cannot compete against Bootle's _elite_,
And that Percy of Pudsey is IT.

Wigan's well in the van, for her sons to a man
Are the ultimate word in cravats
And are said to outdo even Cheadle and Crewe
In the matter of collars and spats;
But the pick of the lot is the privileged spot
Where the smart set, the quite _comme il faut_,
Have a mentor and guide who is famed far and wide
As Bertie the Bridlington Beau.

* * * * *

THE PASSING OF ALFRED.

Alfred is dead and with him has gone John's last efforts at making and
training pets. It has simply been one disappointment after another.
There was Charles the monkey. Charles could write his own name with
a pen and digest the creamiest shaving-stick without making a lather.
There was Joey, the billy-goat, such an entertaining fellow, who
could pick up and set down anything with his horns from a basket to a
dustman. And then there was Livo--immortal Livo. There never was such
a down-at-heel and unscrupulous young ruffian of a mongrel terrier
as Livo, nor one that more completely convinced people that he was a
gentleman of blood and a pure-souled spiritualist.

Of course there were heaps of other pets as well, but just as they
seemed about to reach that stage of human intelligence so earnestly
desired by their young master they all suddenly died, even as Alfred,
the last of a long list, gave up the ghost yesterday.

Alfred was a trout. Not your ordinary fly-jumping kind of trout,
because there is never anything ordinary about John's pets. Alfred,
for instance, had not lived in water for three months. He simply had
no use for the stuff, and, as for jumping at a fly, his nerves were
far too good for that sort of thing.

His attachment to John was complete. He would take fo