--_didn't_, you
know!

* * * * *

[Illustration: BITING SARCASM.

_Gentleman with the Broom_ (_who has inadvertently splashed the
Artist's favourite Shipwreck_). "OW YUS! I SUPPOSE YER THINK YE'RE
THE PRESIDENT O' THE ROY'L ACADERMY! A SETTIN THERE IN THE LAP ER
LUXURY!!"]

* * * * *

[Illustration: "A GOOD LITTLE 'UN IS BETTER THAN A BAD BIG
'UN."--(_P.R. Maxim._)

A BIT OF MODERN BOXIANA.]

"110-Ton Guns do not count for any practical purpose.... These
monsters are the laughing-stock of everyone who takes the
smallest interest in the subject. They are quite indefensible,
and not worth making, even if they were unobjectionable, for
the simple reason that everything we require can be done by
smaller weapons.... It is believed that more of these useless
monsters are to be made by way of reserve. It is an insane
policy, designed simply to save somebody's _amour propre_, and
we still hope to hear from Lord GEORGE HAMILTON that it has
been abandoned."--"_The Times" on the Naval Estimates_.

"That a good little 'un is better than a bad big 'un," is an old and
accepted maxim amongst the really knowing ones of the P.R. It is one,
however, that now, as of yore, swell backers, self-conceited amateurs,
and other pugilistic jugginses ore apt to ignore or forget.

Where, we wonder, would the slab-sided "Sprawleybridge Babe" or
the shambling "Baldnob the Titan" have been in front of the small
but active and accomplished "Duodecimo Dumps"? Why, where the
vaunted "Benicia Boy" would have been after fifty rounds with TOM
SAYERS--_with_ his "Auctioneer" in full play. In fact, when a good
little 'un meets a bad big 'un, it is very soon a case--with the
latter--of "bellows to mend," or "there he goes; with his eye out!"

These remarks have been suggested by recent revelations concerning
that much over-rated pet of the mugs--the "Woolwich Whopper," _alias_
the "Elswick Folly," _alias_ HAMILTON's "Novice."

The "W.W." always _was_ a fraud, and, for all his lumbering bulk and
"MOLINEAUX-like" capacity of "tatur-trap," never _could_ train-on
soundly, or--figuratively speaking--"spank a hole in a pound of
butter." Many cleverish trainers, and still more ambitious backers
of the "Corinthian Jay" species, have had a shy, professionally or
monetarily, at the "Woolwich Whopper," and invariably with disastrous
results. The "W.W.," t