y rate, still hangs, a relic, on
This diaphragm, although the shirt is popped;"
And so it was, I ween, with your position,
Ansonia's sunny child, from house to house
Aye wandering: still you ranked as a musician,
The same as Dr. STRAUSS.

People were rude to you: they said, "Be gibbetted!"
In many a ruthless road your cheek grew wan
Where hawkers and street-music were prohibited
And stout policemen urged you to get on;
Yet still that stubborn heart, the heart of CATO'S kin,
Stayed you, and still the gleam that cannot die,
Though every now and then an old potato skin
Did welt you in the eye.

Tattered and soiled, an exile and an alien,
Somehow you touched the Cockney nymphs with awe;
You lit the cold clay statue, like Pygmalion,
To blood-red raptures; you were sib to SHAW;
Others might hale the town in cushioned chariots
To see them dance or daub, to hear them strum;
You also had your moments: jigging Harriets
Joyed in your simian chum.

And how shall these things change? Shall childish galleries
That deemed you once Apollo's minister,
Say, "Garn, old monkey!" Shall colossal salaries
Reward the Muse and not the dulcimer?
Not gleaming eyeballs, not the soul illuminate?
Shall old faiths falter and Antonio's heart
Sicken the while he churns, and chilly ruminate,
"This is no longer Art"?

So be it then. But lest the slight unparalleled
Shall cause extinction of a breed so stout,
And scatter to the winds what tags his barrel held
And doom him to go under and get out;
Lest he despair and pine from this now streak of ills,
Not ranked with virtuosi's shining shapes,
Let him he classed anew amongst Pithekophils,
An amateur of Apes.

EVOE.

* * * * *

[Illustration: MORE SACRIFICES TO SPEED. THE "MINIM KID-FIT."]

* * * * *

PAYMENT IN KIND.

I argued that one and threepence was too much to pay for the delivery
of a telegram which had only cost sixpence itself; I also argued that
one and threepence was too little for a wealthy institution like the
G.P.O. to worry about, but the messenger wouldn't reduce the price. I
had had my telegram, said he, and I must pay for it. I offered to give
him the telegram back, but he guessed it was only from Carr and wasn't
having any. It was my money he wanted and that, unhappily, was s