y means of
concert parties and motor-trips; also newspapers and periodicals, in
which, to avoid annoyance, the "Situations Vacant" column has been
blacked out.

It is desirable that applicants should not wear fur coats. The present
fashion does not go beyond a grey tweed lounge suit, with white spats
and velours hat.

A limited number of openings are offered to any who care to act as
batmen to unemployed munition-workers.

A doctor is in future to be kept at every Labour Exchange to render
first-aid to those who should be offered a situation.

Applicants are requested not to tease the officials.

* * * * *

JARGON.

From a speech at a Medical conference:--

"He was ashamed of the term 'shell-shock.' It was a bad word, and
should be wiped out of the vocabulary of every scientific man.
It was really molecular abnormality of the nervous system,
characterised by abnormal reactions to ordinary stimuli."--_Daily
Paper_.

We must try to remember this.

* * * * *

A MODEST ESTIMATE.

From a publisher's advertisement:--

"Baroness Orczy has laid the world under a fresh debt of
gratitude. 7/- net."--"_Times" Literary Supplement_.

* * * * *

"The question one could naturally put is, 'Has the
millennium arrived, when the lion and the lamb shall lay
together?'"--_Monthly Paper_.

Let's hope, at all events, that the produce won't be a cockatrice's
egg.

* * * * *

"This is the anniversary of the death of Robert Southey in 1843.
Perhaps his most celebrated poem is the delightful 'Ode to a
Skylark,' the beginning of which 'Hail to thee, blithe spirit,' is
known to every school child."--_New York Evening Journal_.

It seems that Truth still stands in need of propaganda in America.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Amateur Photographer (on a conducted tour in
France)._"CHARMING SPOT; BUT RATHER DISAPPOINTING. I _QUITE_ HOPED IT
WOULD HAVE BEEN ALL SMASHED UP."]

* * * * *

FINANCIAL INTELLIGENCE.

The decision of _The Westminster Gazette_ to return to its old figure
of a penny must not be taken as a sign that prices generally are
coming down. On the contrary there is every indication that they are
rising and will still rise, as the following symptomatic scraps of
news,