THEIR_ ROOMS!"]

* * * * *

THE KEY TO THE RUSSIAN QUESTION.

[Illustration: I]

It seems after all that the great _casus belli_ between the Porte and
Russia is "Who shall keep the key of the Greek Church?" The contest is
to determine whether the key in question shall dangle on the watch-chain
of the Greek, or hang on the bunch with the street-door and other keys
of the Latin patriarch. We might as well allow the EMPEROR OF CHINA to
interfere with us, and insist on appointing a protector of Temple Bar,
for the purpose of deciding whether the QUEEN or the LORD MAYOR shall
have the custody of that rusty old myth, the Key of the City. It is
absurd, and yet awful to think, that all Europe should be kept on the
_qui vive_ about a key of no real value, and which, in fact, nobody
cares about.

We think we can furnish a key to the whole difficulty, and we can point
the way to a pacific solution of the question by putting the affair into
the hands of our friend CHUBB of St. Paul's Churchyard, or our equally
enlightened friend BRAMAH of Piccadilly. We are convinced that either of
these ingenious individuals will undertake to dispose of the question,
"Who shall keep the key?" by furnishing each party with a duplicate. By
this arrangement either of the individuals claiming custody of the key
will have it in his power to avoid the necessity of either picking the
lock or picking a quarrel.

* * * * *

ENTERPRISING UNDERTAKERS.

OPHELIA, in her madness, exclaims, "They say the owl was a baker's
daughter." This was a delirious mistake. What they do say, or ought to
say, is, that the owl is an undertaker's son. For truly the son of a
certain sort of undertaker has an owl for his father: is an owl and the
son of an owl, that ominous bird which

"Puts the wretch that lies in woe,
In remembrance of a shroud."

Witness the subjoined statement by a correspondent of the _Daily
News_:--

"A member of my family is just recovering from an illness which, for
a time, kept all about her in daily apprehension. The fact of the
illness becoming known in the neighbourhood, I am forthwith
inundated with undertakers' circulars, in which all the horrid
paraphernalia of the tomb are set forth, together with the various
merits, "readiness," "dispatch," &c., of the applicant, expectant of
his job, and all this is shamelessly, indecently, wantonl