Socialist Demagogue. "THE EMPIRE, FORSOOTH! AND WHAT'S THAT, I SHOULD LIKE TO KNOW. BROTHERS AND SISTERS; THE EMPIRE'S AN INVENTION OF THE TORIES!"

I'LL TELL YOU WHAT IT IS,

THE LAST STAND.

(Golf will appear for the first time in the Olympic Games' programme for 1916.)

FETTERS of sloth hang round and hobble us,
Swiftly the webs are spun;

Scarce have we time ere the spiders gobble us
To utter "Jack Robinson."

Chief of our shames, we have lost our claims
To excel the world at Olympic Games;
We are heirs no more to the old Discobolus;
We can neither leap nor run.

Where, ah where shall we seek asylum?

How shall we gild again,

Fallen and tarnished deep, the whilom
Coronals? Frank and Dane

Filch from our brows the olive boughs;

Sprinters we have, but they halt like cows;

And as for our chess and our chucking the pilum-
Ah, stop! It is too much pain.

Thus did I muse, and my heart debated

Sadly about Berlin;

Here, I thought, shall the lease undated

Of Albion's pride fall in!

We shall gain no goal, I said to my soul,
We shall fall at the foot of the greased Pole,
We shall bow our heads to the Czech, checkmated,
We shall yield the palm to the Finn.

When lo! like a sun-burst seen through vapour
As a three-days' fog clears off,

I found this par in my morning paper,
"Hellas embraces golf":

German and Yank, you may keep your swank
With the quivering lath and the diver's tank,
But who shall best o'er the bunker caper,

And joust in the sand-filled trough?

None, I think, but the loved of Heaven.
Whose path is the ancient green,

Whose hearts are buoyed with the sea-dogs' leaven,
Whose brand is the iron keen;

Only the race with the brassie face

That follow the spheres in a long, stern chase,

That still putt out as the tars of Devon
Put out to the Spaniard's teen.

Here (so carry our drives, O Castor,
Pollux our chip-shots eke)

I will wager a crown to a mere piastre

That Teuton and Gaul and Greek

And the far-away Japs and the sledge-borne Lapps
Shall fall to our plus-four handicaps,

And the god shall fasten the oleaster
To the blade of a British cleek.

EVOE.

Child. "GOIN' SHOPPIN' DOWN RYE LANE, MUVVER?" Mother. "No, DEARIE; MOTHER ISN'T DRESSED FOR RYE LANE."

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your Convertible Land-Taxers, home
has been a different place. Please send From a calendar :-
me another half-dozen, as those we had
were all used on the morning after
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE's last speech.

Japan Times.

"O that a man might know
The end of this day's business ere it comes!
Troilus & Cressida, iii. 3."
O that a man might know the end of

What about those boring Relations? Julius Cæsar (v. 1)!

FORCED CARDS.

card games.

The

In a

There is a general sigh of weariness I do so, and breathe again. about the table. "Oh, you'll see game goes on. I USUALLY defend myself by claiming in a minute when you've started But my respite is short. that my mind isn't built for learning playing." moment they are after me again. I am I have cynical friends I wait impatiently and apprehen- frozen with terror. My hands shake. who say, "Why drag in card games?" sively. Presently I find myself with What do I do?" but, of course, they exaggerate. My about a dozen cards in my hands. On "Put down three more. No, not mind is equal to any amount of the backs are some very pretty pictures, there . . . over here! Good." There politics, law, and finance. The moment representing Sir WALTER RALEIGH is a murmur of applause. But Alice I sit down at a little green table, how- (brown and black) before Windsor has been looking over my shoulder, "to ever, I am chastened, shamed, publicly Castle (mostly black) throwing a brown help me," as she explains it. She gasps. cloak into a black puddle, while QUEEN "Good heavens, you played the Queen It usually happens like this. Sup- ELIZABETH (brown), followed by brown of Sheba!" she cries to a horrified pose it is evening. I am tired, and I gentlewomen, steps all over it. As an audience. "Never mind, Uncle. We sit down with the relish of the tired business man who has been sitting down all day. I pick up a book or a newspaper or a time-table, and muse over it. Just as I begin to enjoy myself comfortably, in rush Ruth and Alice and Jack.

humiliated.

Wearily I lay down the

Arthur Norris.

shan't count it this time." Her tone is indulgent. "You couldn't be expected to know that it counts thirty against you."

The next time my turn comes round my heart is in my boots. I play three cards. Alice watches me again.

"No, Uncle, not those cards . . . no, no, not that Haven't you even

one

got them sorted? Now dis-
card. No, not into your
pocket. No, not under the
table... There... that's
right . . No, here! Now
play three
No, not
those... there!"

So the game progresses. I am led as the blind. At last the process ends, the scores are added. I am minus eighty-three. I am miserable.

"You did beautifully," they all assure me in chorus. "You'll learn the game in another jiffy. Don't you think it's fun? Now for another."

Quietly but resolutely I rise to my feet. "I am very sorry," I say. "I have a headache, or something. I regret that I cannot join you in another round. The subject is a painful one. Good night."

paper. There is no hope. WEARS THEIR COLLARS GOIN' ASTERN."
First Bluejacket. "I OFFEN WONDERS, BILL, WHY PARSONS ALWAYS
All is lost. We wake a

"Hurry up, Uncle," says Ruth
severely. "It's your turn."
I am dazed.

sleeping card-table in the corner of example of economy in art, the thing is
the room, set it on its unwilling feet, admirable.
and sit down about it. Alice produces
a huge pack of cards and hands them to
Jack, who proceeds to arrange and disar-
range them in a purposeless sort of way.
"Now explain the game, please," I
venture. "How do you play?"

"The idea," says Jack, "is not to get sevens. And of course the Ace of Diamonds counts ten."

This is the way such people always begin.

"Yes, but what do I do? Do I hand the cards to my partner, or put them on the table, or stuff them one by one into my pockets, or just put them in piles? And what happens to the pile in the middle of the table?"

"What do I do?"

Play any three cards."

"How do you mean 'play'? Do I Thus differing from us, who are particuput them down somewhere?"

larly mobile on such occasions.

Life's Little Tragedies. "But to claim that because a sprinter can cover a hundred yards in ten seconds, that therefore he can accomplish a speed of better than three miles an hour, is to talk nonsense." Sheffield Independent.

It is pathetic that, at the very moment I do so. when he was about to crush his oppo"Now take back the three you played nent, the writer should have been let down by a careless compositor.

first."