the paw. He drove straight to the barracks, informed the police of what
had occurred, and having met his assailant on the road near by, he was
placed under arrest."--_Irish Paper._

The Alderman seems to have had a rough time all through.

* * * * *

[Illustration: ROUGE GAGNE--

MAIS LA SEANCE N'EST PAS ENCORE TERMINEE.]

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Newly-crowned Cotton King_ (_with the plovers' eggs_).
"'ERE, MY LAD, TAKE THESE DARN THINGS AWAY. THEY'RE 'ARD-BOILED AND
ABSOLUTELY STONE-COLD."]

* * * * *

THE MOO-COW.

I was getting so tired of the syncopated life of town (and it didn't fit in
with my present literary work) that I bribed my old pal Hobson to exchange
residences with me for six months, with option; so now he has my flat in
town, complete with Underground Railway and street noises (to say nothing
of jazz music wherever he goes), and I have his country cottage, old-
fashioned and clean, and a perfectly heavenly silence to listen to. Still,
there _are_ noises, and their comparative infrequency makes them the more
noticeable. There is, for instance, a cow that bothers me more than a
little. It has chosen, or there has been chosen, for its day nursery a
field adjoining my (really Hobson's) garden. It has selected a spot by the
hedge, almost under the study window, as a fit and proper place for its
daily round of mooing.

Possibly this was at Hobson's request. Perhaps he likes the sound of
mooing, or, conceivably, the cow doesn't like Hobson, and moos to annoy
him. But surely it cannot mistake me for him. We are not at all alike. He
is short and dark; I am tall and fair. This has given rise to a question in
my mind: Can cows distinguish between human beings?

Anyway the cow worries me with its continual fog-horn, and I thought I
would write to the owner (a small local dairy-farmer) to see if he could
manage to find another field in which to batten this cow, where it could
moo till it broke its silly tonsils for all I should care; so I indited
this to him:--

MY DEAR SIR,--You have in your entourage a cow that is causing me some
annoyance. It is one of those red-and-white cows (an Angora or Pomeranian
perhaps; I don't know the names of the different breeds, being a town
mouse), and it has horns of which one is worn at an angle of fifteen or
twenty degrees higher than the other. This may help you