best answer
is the silent surgeon's knife!
And every _man_ will say,
As you wriggle on your way,
"If 'emotion for the sake of emotion _is_ the aim of Art,' dear me!
What a morbidly muckily emotional young man the 'developed' young
man must be!"

* * * * *

THE AMERICAN GIRL.

[An American Correspondent of _The Galignani Messenger_ is
very severe on the manners of his fair countrywomen.]

[Illustration]

She "guesses" and she "calculates," she wears all sorts o' collars,
Her yellow hair is not without suspicion of a dye;
Her "Pappa" is a dull old man who turned pork into dollars.
But everyone admits that she's indubitably spry.

She did Rome in a swift two days, gave half the time to Venice,
But vows that she saw everything, although in awful haste;
She's fond of dancing, but she seems to fight shy of lawn-tennis,
Because it might endanger the proportions of her waist.

Her manner might be well defined as elegantly skittish;
She loves a Lord as only a Republican can do;
And quite the best of titles she's persuaded are the British,
And well she knows the Peerage, for she reads it through and through.

She's bediamonded superbly, and shines like a constellation,
You scarce can see her fingers for the multitude of rings;
She's just a shade too conscious, so it seems, of admiration,
With irritating tendencies to wriggle when she sings.

She owns she is "Amur'can," and her accent is alarming;
Her birthplace has an awful name you pray you may forget;
Yet, after all, we own "_La Belle Americaine_" is charming,
So let us hope she'll win at last her long-sought coronet.

* * * * *

TIPS FROM THE TAPE.

(_PICKED UP IN MR. PUNCH'S OWN SPECIAL CITY CORNER._)

In my last I announced that I was busily giving my mind to the
launching of a new "Combination Pool" over the satisfactory results
of which to all concerned in it, under certain contingencies, I had no
shadow of a doubt. This I have since managed to float on the market,
and, though I worked it on a principle of my own, which, for want of
a better description, I have styled amalgamated "Profit and Loss,"
I regret to have to inform those clients who have entrusted me with
their cheques in the hopes of getting, _as I really fully believed
they would_, 700 per cent. for their money in three days, th