PAX GERMANICA; OR, THE TEUTON DOVECOTE.

GERMAN EAGLE (to Arbitration Bird). "NO FOREIGN DOVES REQUIRED; WE HATCH OUR OWN, THANKYOU."

་་

Furniture Remover. "AND WHERE SHALL I PUT ALL THESE 'ERE, MUM, PLEASE?"
Distracted Lady. "OH-ER-THOSE? WELL-ER-WHICH ROOMS WOULD YOU PUT THEM IN IF YOU WERE ME?"

Mlle. Eugénie Gherkin, who hails | Vovchok is a confirmed vegetarian THE RUBBER-SOLED RUSSIANS. from Nijni-Novgorod, where her father and deeply versed in the lore of the IN view of the engagement of the was Professor of Experimental Toxi- Midrash. His great recreation is famous corps de ballet of the Imperial cology, excels in the macabre style. sturgeon-fishing on the Volga. Theatres of St. Petersburg and Moscow Her figure is slim and willowy and she As a grotesque dancer Stenka for the Coronation season at the is famous for the size and colour of her Shusherin has no equal. It is he Bolosseum Music-hall, some personal eyes, which have an emerald lustre who enraptured the fastidious French details about the most illustrious that is all their own. Mlle. Gherkin critics by his rocking turns in mid-air, members of the troupe should not be originally intended to embrace the and though not yet twenty-three he without interest to our readers. They literary calling, and it is rumoured that has qualified for an old-age pension at have been obtained at great expense she has been approached with a view to thirty-five. His youth was spent and no little risk by our representative, her undertaking the editorship of The among the Polabs and he is a great who has attended most of the dinner-Times' daily Dancing Supplement. As, authority on the palatalisation of the dances given by the Russkiy Encyclo- however, she has never dined at any of Proto-Slavonic nasals. (See Ency. pedicheskiy Slovar on its tour through the Ency. Brit. dinners, negotiations Great, White, and Little Russia. were reluctantly abandoned.

Brit., vol. xxiii., p. 912.) He has already dined seventeen times with Dr. HUGH CHISHOLM, whom he presented on the occasion of their last meeting with a magnificent silverplated tundra.

The ladies are headed by Mlle. Prominent amongst the male dancers Dushenka Nosovich whose pedal presti- is the far-famed Marko Vovchok, who digitation places her in a class quite since the lamented death of Prosper apart. She is, in the charming phrase of Shevchenko has stood at the head of our Transatlantic cousins, a very lovely- the saltatory confraternity. Vovchok, M. Shusherin, it may be added, is appearing woman of some twenty-two who is of Ugro-Finnish descent, has deeply mortified that, along with the summers, a fine classical scholar, and long been hailed by experts as the Rhodes Scholars, he is unable to take from her earliest childhood she has greatest living executant of the auto-part in the All-British Hopping week subsisted entirely on Koumiss, Edel- cephalous school of dogmatic choreo- which will be held in Kent later in the weiss and Standard bread made of graphy. He was destined for the stage year. ground jumping beans inoculated with in infancy and studied for ten years the Bacillus Bulgaricus. She studied under Kirsha Pypin, Sviatogorskiy, music under Napravnik and Khanikin, Pososhkov and Bogdan Khmelnibskiy and singing under Klinka.

Great Unionist Triumph. "Another outstanding feature of yesterday's before making his début at Pskov. game was the referer dum."-Liverpool Echo.

THE POLITICS OF MENYA. than their opponents had been. In accelerated.

A PREHISTORIC PRECEDENT. It will be news to many that in the days of Atlantis there was in that remarkable continent a country called Menya, which was at one time in a political condition exactly similar to that in which we find ourselves to-day. Like our own, that fortunate land possessed two Houses of Assembly the upper and hereditary, and the lower and elective. It was also foitunate in possessing a party system; it is known that the peoples of Atlantis were in an advanced state of civilisation. As our two Houses are at present quarrelling, so were those of Mènya, and for a precisely similar reason; while, to carry the parallel still further, the party which was temporarily "top-dog" (as they called it in their quaint phrase) in the lower assembly, finding themselves in at permanent minority in the upper house, had arrangel to get over the difficulty by the creation of a large number of hereditary legislators of their own way of thinking, thus transferring the preponderance in that element from their opponents to themselves. To the British patriot of to-day a knowledge of how things turned out in that far-off epoch ought to be a matter of absorbing interest; and such knowledge we are enabled to place before our readers.*

At last the day came

their turn they created a large batch when the final batch of commoners had
of new peers, to the loudly expressed to be taken to reinforce the Govern-
indignation of the enemy, who hotly ment in the upper assembly; and the
condemned such methods as uncon- entire male adult population of Mènya
stitutional. Not only that, but by had become peers.
way of going one better, they doubled, The result, which ought to have been
in their favour, the majority their foreseen from the first, was extremely
predecessors had possessed. This, too, beautiful. Everyone was satisfied.
worked well for a while; but again there The power of the hereditary element,
came a change, and the original instead of being annihilated, became
reformers returned to power. The first universal. At the same time the
thing they did was to make some new country had arrived at that perfect

Emen Webb

AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S LOVE-LETTERS.
Bertic. "I'VE BEEN HAVING A LOVELY GAME WITH
THIS POST OFFICE SET YOU GAVE ME, AUNTIE. I'VE
TAKEN A REAL LETTER TO EVERY HOUSE IN THE ROAD.
casual-
66
Auntie. "How NICE! AND WHERE DID YOU GET ALL
THE LETTERS?"

66

form of Socialism where all men
are equal. As there were no
general elections, the party system
died a natural death. All proposed
legislation automatically under-
went a referendum of the whole
country; and the result invariably!
tallied with the vote of the House
of Lords.
DUM-DUM.

A very second ROOSEVELT

Is my son John.

With pirates I've had little truck;
I never thought they 'd bring me

luck.

But my son John, he loves them well,

When black and ear-ringed like a belle:

He'd face the horde if chance occurred,

Bertie. OH, I FOUND A BIG BUNDLE TIED UP WITH I know it, for I have his word.

With slash and parry, cut and thrust,
He'd make the beggars lick the dust.
Brave scion of a race that's gone!
A bold and burly buccaneer
Whose eye unflinching knows no fear
Is my son John.

To employ our modern terminology of "peers " and "peerage," it is recorded that the new creation of Mènyak peers amounted in number to some six hundred. This gave a very comfortable majority, besides allowing quite a handsome margin for ties, such as backsliding. The experiment was, for a time, entirely successful. More so, indeed, than appeared to the careless eye; for, as the giving of a peerage was peers. Not only did they treble their preconditional on the payment by the vious majority but they further allowed recipient of a large sum into what was a very considerable percentage to make called the party chest, the Government up for the continual drain due to backof the day found themselves provided sliding. And now we can begin to see with a considerable addition to those our way to a logical conclusion. With sinews of war by which they proposed each transfer of popular power the Yet I have heard of heroes too to keep the voters up to a conviction hereditary element of Mènya continued Who turn at times a little blue; of their superior virtues. But good to increase in a kind of geometrical Of V.C.'s nonchalant and calm things do not last for ever. That progression, till in time there were Who'd dare the death without a qualm notorious enemy of Governments, the more Mènyak peers than Menyak Yet shiver like a jelly at swing of the pendulum, occurred, and commoners. As voters became fewer, The presence of the homely cat; a time came when the rival party owing to the elevation of so many of While others 'tis perchance a fablefound themselves in office, with a great their number, most of the proletariat Refuse to sit thirteen at table. majority in the lower, and an equally took to voting for the party out of A thought to muse and ponder on decisive minority in the upper, house. office, in the hope of getting made When in the dark the hand I keep, The new Government were no less wily pcers themselves on a change of And hold until he falls asleep, Government; thus the pendulum was Of my son John.

* Never mind how.

Clergyman (taking friend round poor parish). "YES, A NERVOUS LITTLE FELLOW. I REMEMBER HIS FATHER WAS HIGHLY STRUNG." Woman. "YE REMEMBER WRONG, THEN. 'E GOT ORF WIV TEN YEARS!"