rom a fairer hand was never knew."

And when the judge had had number 7,
Maud seemed an angel direct from Heaven.

And the judge declared, "You're a lovely girl,
An' I'm for you, Maudie, I'll tell the worl'."

And the judge said, "Marry me, Maudie dearie?"
And Maud said yes to the well known query.

And she often thinks, in her rustic way,
As she powders her nose with _Bon Sachet_,

"I never'n the world would 'a got that guy,
If I'd waited till after the First o' July."

And of all glad words of prose or rhyme,
The gladdest are, "Act while there yet is time."

The Carlyles

[I was talking with a newspaper man the other day who seemed
to think that the fact that Mrs. Carlyle threw a teacup at
Mr. Carlyle should be given to the public merely as a fact.

But a fact presented to people without the proper--or even,
if necessary, without the improper--human being to go with it
does not mean anything and does not really become alive or
caper about in people's minds.

But what I want and what I believe most people want when a
fact is being presented is one or two touches that will make
natural and human questions rise in and play about like this:

"Did a servant see Mrs. Carlyle throw the teacup? Was the
servant an English servant with an English imagination or an
Irish servant with an Irish imagination? What would the fact
have been like if Mr. Browning had been listening at the
keyhole? Or Oscar Wilde, or Punch, or the Missionary Herald,
or The New York Sun, or the Christian Science Monitor?"
--GERALD STANLEY LEE in the Satevepost.]

BY OUR OWN ROBERT BROWNING

As a poet heart- and fancy-free--whole,
I listened at the Carlyles' keyhole;
And I saw, I, Robert Browning, saw,
Tom hurl a teacup at Jane's jaw.
She silent sat, nor tried to speak up
When came the wallop with the teacup--
A cup not filled with Beaune or Clicquot,
But one that brimmed with Orange Pekoe.
"Jane Welsh Carlyle," said Thomas, bold,
"The tea you brewed for m' breakfast's cold!
I'm feeling low i' my mind; a thing
You know b' this time. Have at you!"... Bing!
And hurled, threw he at her the teacup;
And I wrote it, deeming it unique, up.

* * * * *

BY OUR OWN OSCAR WILDE

LADY LEFFINGWELL (_coldly_).--A full teacup!
What a waste! So many good women
and so little good tea.

[_Exit Lady Leffingwell_]

*