* * * *

"The Prince of Wales noticed a private in his own regiment, the
Grenadier Guards, who is six feet inches in height. He is six feet
inches in height."--_Scotsman._

It sounds silly, but the writer evidently means it.

* * * * *

Illustration: THE RULING PASSION.

_Voice from below._ "FOR 'EAVEN'S SAKE, MUM, GET BACK. THE FIRE-ESCAPE
WILL BE 'ERE IN FIVE MINUTES."

_Endangered Female._ "Five minutes? Then throw me back my knitting."

* * * * *

THE WILLOW-PATTERN PLATE.

A Philistine? Then you will smile
At this old willow-pattern plate
And junks of long-forgotten date
That anchor off Pagoda Isle;

At little pig-tailed simpering rakes
Who kiss their hands (three miles away)
To dainty beauties of Cathay
Beside those un-foreshortened lakes.

With hand on heart they smile and sue.
Their topsy-turvy world, you say,
Is out of all perspective? Nay,
'Tis we who look at life askew.

Dreams lose their spell; hard facts we prize
In our humdrum philosophy;
But, could we change, who would not be
A suitor for those azure eyes?

Who would not sail with fairy freight
Piloting some flat-bottomed barge--
A size too small, or else too large--
On this old willow-pattern plate?

* * * * *

"The 'Figaro' publishes a telegram from Petrograd which contradicts
the German announcement that Lodz is occupied by the
Kermans."--_Lancashire Evening Post._

And quite right too.

* * * * *

A MARNE FOOTNOTE.

There was a battlefield, I was told, with a ruined village near it,
about as far from Paris as Sevenoaks is from London, and I decided to
see it. The preliminaries, they said, would be difficult, but only
patience was needed--patience and one's papers all in order. It would be
necessary to go to the War Bureau, opposite the Invalides.

I went to the War Bureau opposite the Invalides one afternoon. I rang
the bell and a smiling French soldier opened the door. Within were long
passages and other smiling French soldiers in little knots guarding the
approaches, all very bureaucratic. The head of the first knot referred
me to the second knot; the head of the second referred me to a third.
The head of this knot, which guarded the approach to the particular
military mandarin whom I neede