y,
And to the kindly G.P.O.
That sped it on its way.

A blessing on the Editor
Who let it see the light;
Likewise the patient Printer, for
He got the colons right;
Here's to the "sub," whose special line
Was spacing it to fit,
And to the cheery Philistine
Who lit his pipe with it.

* * * * *

An Empire Day Essay.

"Dear Teacher,--On Empire day we had a holiday. I had a flag on
Frideday. On Fridday I was very happy, was you Teacher when we had a
holiday."

* * * * *

"The King has conferred the Grand Cross of the Victorian Order
on M. Doumergue, the Premier of France."

And _The Sydney Sun_ heads this "Horrors in France." The Victorian
Order, however, is not really so dangerous as that.

* * * * *

THE SIGHTS OF LONDON.

[Illustration: (_Just after feeding-time--Inner Temple._)

"Come on, 'Tilda, bring 'im along and let 'im look at the lawyers."]

* * * * *

ULSTER FOR SCOTLAND.

_"Nil mortalibus ardui est."--Q. Horatius Flaccus._

When Horace made those sound remarks.
Showing--in spite of Jove's decree--
How mortals rode in impious arks
Transilient o'er the sacred sea,
How there was not beneath the sun
A task so tough but what he'd back us
Somehow to go and see it done
(Such was the _flair_ of Flaccus);

Little he guessed how wind and tide
Should be the sport of human skill;
How steel and steam should mock their pride
And get the deep reduced to _nil_;
How we should come in course of years,
Either by cable or Marconi,
To hold across the hemispheres
A conversazione.

He'd learn with even more surprise
That, after working all this while
On ways and means to minimise
The severance of isle and isle,
Erin we find as far away,
As rudely severed by a windy sea,
As Athens seemed in Horace' day
From old Brundusium (Brindisi).

Strange, too, in yonder hybrid land
This myth about a racial knot
Binding the gay Hibernian and
The dourly earnest Ulster-Scot--
Neighbours whose one and only link
(A foil to their profound disparity)
Is--thanks to some volcanic kink--
A common insularity.

Come, let us down this myth in dust;
Let statesmen's time no more be spent
To fake a "race" from what is just
A geologic accident;
Let a gr