she comes!"

Harrison was pulled clean out of his nether garments, cursing bitterly as
the wind caught his bare legs, and hung suspended between earth and water,
amid ribald comments from above.

One more pull would do it. But at that moment Fritz, apparently feeling
that we weren't taking his war seriously enough, opened up with a
machine-gun. The rescue party dropped the rope and rolled heavily into the
shell-hole, and the sorely tried Harrison found himself back again, but
face downwards this time, and held by his arms up to the elbows.

We could hear horrible language, and after a moment, all being quiet, I
crawled to the edge and looked over. His last struggle had split Harrison's
tunic and pulled it clean off his back; and now, with his shirt-tail
trailing dismally in the Ooze, he was making the best of his own way to the
dressing-station, ungratefully consigning his gallant rescuers to complete
and lasting perdition as he went.

* * * * *

[Illustration: "A LOT OF KHAKI ABOUT, WAITER."

"YES, SIR. IT MAKES SOME OF US OLDER ONES FEEL A BIT MUFTI, DON'T IT?"]

* * * * *

A TOPICAL TRAGEDY.

Jim Startin was not loved at school;
We thought him rather knave than fool.
Migrating thence to Oxford, he
Failed to secure a pass degree.
Years sped--some twenty--ere again
Jim Startin swam into my ken.
I met him strolling down the Strand
Well-dressed, well-nourished, sleek and bland,
A high-class journalistic swell--
The Headline Expert of _The Yell_.
Great at the art, in peaceful days,
Of finding means our scalps to raise,
The War had since revealed in him
A super-Transatlantic vim,
And day by day his paper's bills
Gave us fresh epileptic thrills.
The sons of Belial, in the rhyme
Of DRYDEN, had a glorious time,
But never managed to attain
To Jim's success in giving pain.
But while his power was at its height
It perished in a single night;
For, with his bills by law abolished,
Jim's occupation was demolished;
Headlines that can't be blazed abroad
On bills and posters are a fraud;
They cease to titillate the mob
Or draw the pennies from its fob,
So Jim was "fired" and lost his job.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Lady (to coalheavers)._ "_SO_ SWEET OF YOU TO COME. I DO
HOPE YOU'LL COME AGAIN."]

* * * * *

"More to the