UNANSWERABLE.

Young Hopeful. "'SHAMEFULLY IGNORANT'? OF COURSE I'M IGNORANT, FATHER. BUT THEN, WHY DID YOU SEND ME TO A PUBLIC SCHOOL? I ALWAYS LOOK UPON A FELLOW WHO'S LEARNT ANYTHING AT A PUBLIC SCHOOL AS A SELF-EDUCATED MAN!"

SOMETHING LIKE A BANK HOLIDAY. (Fragment from the Prophetic Account of a Pessimist Reporter.) "WHAT is the matter with you, my man?"

The volunteer was too tired to speak. He fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. He had been on his feet for about sixteen hours. He had marched through mud and ploughed land, and over stony roads, and was thoroughly done up. So the doctor turned to the second patient, who had been carried into his consulting-room. "You look weary, my good woman ?" "So would you be.' was the angry reply, "if you had passed through all I have. Up at five in the morning, then shake, shake, shake for six hours at a stretch-in the railway. Then an hour's dawdle in a place we did not know; and then shake, shake, shake for another long spell home again."

"You went by the excursion ?"

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"Can't you see we did? But don't stand dawdling there, but do your best to save the lives of the children.'

The doctor passed a number more in the same plight, and then came to a person of greater intelligence than the rest. "And you, too, want my assistance ?"

"Well, yes. You see, I believed that if I could get a perfect change from my hard work in the office for one whole day I should be set up until midsummer. But I am afraid, like everyone else, I have overdone it."

ROUNDABOUT READINGS.

THE JOYS OF A BOAT-RACE.

IN the Badminton Magazine for this present month of April I note specially an article, by Mr. C. M. PITMAN, bearing the above title. It is a spirited and graphic piece of writing, and I heartily congratulate this gallant young oarsman on his first contribution to monthly literature. Great Heaven! how the months slip away and leave no sign. It seems but yesterday that Mr. PITMAN was stroking the Oxford eight as a freshman recently imported from Eton. How brilliantly he took them along, with how cool a head and with what excellent judgment did he stall off the spurts in the rival crew until he finally brought his merry men safely past the "Ship" at Mortlake, winners by nearly three lengths. All that seems to me, pondering these matters, to have happened but yesterday; yet four years have sped upon their way, and three times more since then did Mr. PITMAN row in a victorious crew. Now he, too, has gone down (as they say both at Oxford and at Cambridge); the quads of his college know him no more, and probably, since oarsmen tend to the law, he is acquiring an intimate knowledge of procedure, of statements of claim and of defence, of interrogatories, and of the rule in Shelley's Case, in musty chambers either of the Temple or of Lincoln's Inn. In the dim future I behold him, a grave and reverend Judge of the Supreme Court, presiding with reminiscent dignity and increased weight at a boat-race dinner.

MR. PITMAN describes no particular race. He gives an account of the symptoms that afflict the mind of an oarsman engaged in a race. Vivid to an almost painful degree is his description of the nervous and disjointed conversation of a crew at their last meal before the race, of the aimless questions, the irrelevant answers, and the general assumption of an airy unconcern (it deceives nobody) that mark every member of the crew. This is the state of mind known to University athletes as "needle." Those who have been through a similar experience will be the first to testify to the accuracy of the picture.

IT is at such a time that men decide that there is no pleasure in rowing, and that no power on earth shall ever induce them to take a seat in a boat again. Everything seems to have gone wrong; the world seems to be in a conspiracy against them. What does the crowd mean by smiling and talking and chaffing? How dare men and women gather with casual carelessness to witness the terrible struggle that is about to take place-a struggle so important to those who take part in it that they cannot tear their thoughts away from it for a single moment? These are some of the questions that chase Will he be able to last out the whole course ? Is it not possible that one another through an oarsman's mind. And there are others. he may collapse utterly when half way over the course, and offer a shocking spectacle to the assembled thousands? What if he should catch a crab, or if his oar should break, or if the coxswain should steer them crashing into a pleasure-boat, or if some one should put his foot through the frail skin of the racing boat, and cause her to sink? And so in a sort of dream he dons his shorts, his zephyr and his shoes, helps to carry the boat down to the water, and mechanically takes his accustomed place. Almost before he realises what has happened, the crew are at the stake-boat, the umpire has fired his pistol, and the race has started.

No needle afflicts him now: dismal thoughts and nervousness have vanished as if by the touch of a magician's wand, and all his powers, bodily and mental, are concentrated on his work. Last P Why, he feels he could last till the crack of doom. How it inspires a man to have the other crew alongside, to know they are worthy opponents, but yet mortal, men not to be daunted by a single spurt, or broken up by one or two rolls, but liable notwithstanding to lose their winds and to fall behind. How the boat springs to each stroke; Jupiter! what a fearful roll that was; how thin and distant sound the eldritch shrieks of the coxswain; No. 5 in the other crew has got his slide stuck-splendid!-how curious that pale man on a moored. steamer looked in a green tie. Oh, oh, stroke is quickening-yes, the crew pick it up with him-glorious!-but I can follow the race no farther, for as I write a needle pierces me, and I feel as nervous as though I saw the whole stress and struggle raging before my eyes.

"Extremes meet-in the doctor's consulting-room," observed the medical man, drily. "If you overdo everything-soldiering, tour-gether, of victories gloriously celebrated, of defeats manfully endured, ing, walking-what can you expect? Nature is nature, and objects to tricks. But you may as well tell me the cause of all this." Then said the strongest of the sufferers, "Please, we have been enjoying the Bank holiday."

Thought as much," muttered the medico. "St. Lubbock may be the patron of the great middle class, but he is equally the benefactor of the disciples of Esculapius!"

AND the memories of delightful friendships, of toil endured toof the little troubles that diversified the monotony of training, the nicknames of each member of the crew, their little foibles, their sturdy, honest disbelief in their rivals, their gallant and unquenchable belief in themselves-all these are to the man who has rowed in a race a possession for ever. Of this no length of years can rob him; and as he meets his old companions, and fights his old races over again, he will declare to himself that if he had his life to live once more he would be a rowing man rather than anything else. That is the conclusion to which Mr. PITMAN's article has brought me. Those who

ANNOYING PROBLEM FOR FRANCE AND RUSSIA.-The caisse of Egypt. wish to know what it means to race should read it for themselves.

JOTTINGS AND TITTLINGS.

(BY BABOO HURRY BUNGSHO JABBERJEE, B.A.)
No. VIII.

How Mr. Jabberjee delivered an Oration at a Ladies' Debating Club.
MISS SPINK (whom I have mentioned supra as a feminine inmate of
Porticobello House) is in additum a member of a Debating Female
Society, which assembles once a week in various private Westbourne
Grove parlours, for argumentative intercourse.

So, she expressing an anxious desire that I should attend one of
these conclaves, I consented, on ascertaining that I should be afforded
the opportunity of parading the gab with which I
have been gifted in an extemporised allocution.

On the appointed evening I directed my steps, under the guidance of the said Miss SPINK, to a certain imposing stucco residence hard by, wherein were an assortment of female women conversing with vivacious garrulity, in a delicious atmosphere of tea, coffee, and buttered bread.

After having partaken freely of these comestibles, we made the adjournment to a luxuriously upholstered parlour, circled with plush-seated chairs and adorned with countless mirrors, and there we began to beg the question at issue, towhit, "To what extent has Ibsen (if any) contributed towards the Cause of Female Emancipation?” which was opened by a weedy, tall male gentleman, with a lofty and a shining forehead, and round, owlish spectacle-glasses. He read a very voluminous paper, from which I learnt that IBSEN was the writer of innumerable new-fangled dramas of very problematical intentions, exposing the hollow conventionalisms of all established social usages, especially in the matrimonial department.

When he had ceased there was a universal and unanimous silence, due to uncontrollable female bashfulness, for the duration of several minutes, until the chairwoman exhorted someone to have the courage of her opinions. And the ice being once fractured, one Amurath succeeded another in disjointed commentaries, plucking crows in the teeth of the assertions of the Hon'ble Opener and of their precursors, and resumed their seats with abrupt precipitancy, stating that they had no further remarks to make.

Then ensued another interim of golden "Silence and slow Time," as Poet KEATS says, which was as if to become Sempiternity, had not I, rushing in where the angels were in fear of slipping up, caught the Speaker in the eye, and tipped the wink of my cacoëthes loquendi.

To prevent disappointment, I shall report my harangue with verbose accuracy.

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The subject for our discursiveness to-night is, "To what extent has Ibsen contributed to the Cause (if any) of Female Emancipation?" and being a total ignoramus up to date of the sheer existence of said hon'ble gentleman, I shall abstain from scratching my head over so Sphinxian a conundrum, and confine myself to knuckling to the obiter diction of sundry lady speakers.

"There was a stout full-blown matron, with grey curl-shavings and a bonnet and plumage, who declaimed her opinionated conviction that it was degrading and infra dig. for any woman to be treated as a doll. (Hear, hear.) Well, I would hatch the questionable egg of a doubt whether any rationalistic masculine could regard the speaker herself in a dollish aspect, and will assure her that in my fatherland every cultivated native gentleman would approach her with the cold shoulder of apprehensive respectfulness. (The bonneted matron becomes ruddier than the cherry with complacency, and fans herself vigorously.)

Myself (assuming a perpendicular attitude, inserting one hand among my vest buttons, and waving the other with a graceful affability). "HON'BLE MISS CHAIRWOMAN, MADAMS, MISSES, AND HON'BLE MISTER OPENER, the humble individual now palpitating on his limbs before you is a denizen from a land whose benighted, ignorant inhabitants are accustomed to treat the females of their species as small fry and fiddle faddle. Yes, Madams and Misses, in India the woman is for"A weedy, tall male gentleman." bidden to eat except in the severest solitude, and after her lord and master has surfeited his pangs of hunger; she may not make the briefest outdoor excursion without permission, and then solely in a covered palkee, or the hermetically sealed interior of a blinded carriage. (Cries of Shame.') In the Zenana, she is restricted to the occupation of puerile gossipings, or listening to apocryphal fairy tales of so scandalising an impropriety that I shrink to pollute my ears by the repetition even of the tit-bits. (Subdued groans.)

Next I shall deal with the tall, meagre female near the fire-hearth, in abbreviated hair and a nose-pinch, who set up the claim that her sex were in all essentials the equals, if not the superiors, of man. Now, without any gairish of words, I will proceed baldly to enumerate various important physical differentiations which- (Intervention by Hon'ble Chairwoman, reminding me that these were not in disputation.) I bow to correction, and kiss the rod by summing up the gist of my argument, viz., that it is nonsensical idiotcy to suppose that a woman can be the equivalent of a man either in intellectual gripe, in bodily robustiousness, or in physical courage. Of the last, I shall afford an unanswerable proof from my own person. It is notorious, urbi et orbi, that every feminine person will flee in panicstricken dismay from the approach of the smallest mouse.

I am a Bengali, and, as such, profusely endowed with the fugacious instinct, and yet, shall I quake in appalling consternation if a mouse is to invade my vicinity?

"Certainly I shall not; and why? Because, though not racially a temerarious, I nevertheless appertain to the masculine sex, and consequentially my heart is not capable of contracting at the mere aspect of a rodent. This is not to blow the triumphant trumpet of sexual superiority, but to prove a simple undenied fact by dint of an a fortiori

"Having pulverised my pinched-nose predecessor, I pass on to a speaker of a very very opposite personality-the well-proportioned, beautious maiden with azure starry eyes, gilded hair, and teeth like the seeds of a pomegranate (oh, si sic omnes!), who vaunted, in the musical accents of a cuckoo, her right to work out her own life, independently of masculine companionship or assistance, and declared that the saccharine element of courtship and connubiality was but the exploded mask of man's tyrannical selfishness.

"Had such shocking sentiments been aired by some of the other lady orators in this room, I must facetiously have recalled them to a certain fabular fox which criticised the unattainable grapes as too immature to merit mastication; but the particular speaker cannot justly be said to be on all fours with such an animal. Understand, please, I am no prejudiced, narrow-minded chap. would freely and generously permit plainfaced, antiquated, unmarriageable madams and misses to undertake the manufacture of their own careers ad nauseam; but when I behold a maiden of such excessive pulchritude(Second intervention by Hon'ble Chairwoman, desiring me to abstain from personal references.) I assure the Hon'ble Miss CHAIRWOMAN that I was not alluding to herself, but since she has spoken in my wheel with such severity, I will conclude with my peroration on the subject for debate, namely, the theatrical dramas of Hon'ble IBSEN. When, Madams and Misses, I make the odious comparison of these works, with which I am completely unacquainted, to the productions of Poet SHAKSPEARE, where I may boast the familiarity that is a breeder of contempt, I find that, in Hamlet's own words, it is the "The late respectable Dr. BEN JOHNSON, gifted author of Bos-Criterion of a Satire,' and I shall assert the unalterable a priori of well's Biography (applause), once rather humorously remarked, my belief that the melodious Swan of Stony Stratford, whether on witnessing a nautch performed by canine quadrupeds, that judged by his longitude, his versical blankness, or the profoundity of although their choreographical abilities were of but a mediocre his attainments in Chronology, Theology, Phrenology, Palmistry, nature the wonderment was that they should be capable at all to Metallurgy, Zoography, Nosology, Chiropody, or the Musical Glasses, execute such a hind-legged feat and tour de force. has outnumbered every subsequent contemporary and succumbed them all!" With this, I sat down, leaving my audience as sotto to voce as fishes with admiration and amazement at the facundity of my eloquence,

"Such being the case, you can imagine the astonishment and gratification I have experienced here this evening at the intelligence and forwardness manifested by so many effeminate intellects. (4 flattered rustle and prolonged simpering.)

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Similarly, it is to me a gaping marvel that womanish tongues should hold forth upon subjects which are naturally far outside the radius of their comprehensions.

and should indubitably have been the recipient of innumerable with him to the noble mansion in question. The mise en scène felicitations but for the fact that Miss SPINK, suddenly experiencing was as perfect as the union of hearts. A duchess made no more sensations of insalubriousness, requested me, without delay, to conduet her from the assemblage.