UP IN OUR
GARDEN!"]

* * * * *

A COMING BIG BORE.

_Being a probable Extract from the "City Intelligence" for 1900._

THE half-yearly meeting to discuss the Report just issued by the Chairman
and Directors of the Amalgamated International Anglo-French Submarine
Channel Tunnel Railway Company was held in the Company's Fortress Boardroom
yesterday afternoon, and, owing to the present critical Continental
outlook, as might have been expected, succeeded in securing the attendance
of an unusually large number of shareholders.

The Chairman, who on rising was received with prolonged hooting and a
chorus, again and again renewed _con amore_ by the assembled audience, of
"_And he's a jolly bad fellow!_" having, at length, though frequently
interrupted, obtained something like a hearing, was understood to say, that
he had little to offer in the shape of comment on the Report submitted to
the meeting. (_Groans._) The causes of its unsatisfactory nature were
patent to all. Owing to their having been compelled, in what he now fully
recognised was a slavish and mistaken obedience to a popular clamour (_a
Voice, "You're right!_"), three years ago, in the height of a sudden scare
about invasion--("_Oh! oh!_")--to let the water in and flood the
Tunnel--(_groans_)--they had been occupied ever since in pumping it out
again, and though now he was glad to announce that the last bucketful had
been emptied out, and that the traffic would be resumed
forthwith--(_cheers_)--still the operation had cost them three millions of
money, that they had to get from the market in the shape of Seventeen per
Cent. First Preference Debentures--("_Oh! oh!_")--on which, however, he
trusted that a favourable season's receipts might enable them possibly to
pay a next half-year's dividend of three and sixpence. (_Prolonged
groans._) It was not much; still, it was something. ("_Oh! oh!_") But if
they wished to secure even this modest remuneration for their money, they
must make up their minds, especially at the present moment, when there was
a daily,--he might almost say, an hourly,--expectation of the withdrawal of
their Ambassador from Paris, that there must be no more craven yielding to
delusive impulses of an idiotic patriotism--(_loud cheers_),--in a word, no
more talk about closing the Tunnel on the paltry plea of "national
security." (_Prolonged cheering._) He was glad to hear those cheers. It was
an endorsement o