rch of a tactless present will bear in mind that Mr. MARK
HAMBOURG has written a book entitled "How to Play the Piano."

***

The great flagstaff at Kew Gardens, which weighs 18 tons and is 215 feet
long, is not to be erected until after the War. This has come as a great
consolation to certain people who had feared the two events would clash.

***

In Mid Cheshire there is a scarcity of partridges, but there is plenty
of other game in Derbyshire. The Mid-Cheshire birds are of the opinion
that this cannot be too strongly advertised.

***

Thirteen years after it was posted at Watford a postcard has just
reached an Ealing lady inviting her to tea, and of course she rightly
protested that the tea was cold.

***

An estate near Goole has been purchased for L118,000, the purchaser
having decided not to carry out his first intention of investing that
amount in a couple of boxes of matches.

***

Herr Erzberger is known among his friends as "The Singing Socialist." We
are afraid however that if he wants peace he will have to whistle for it.
***

The Provisional Government in Russia, according to _The Evening News,_
has "always regarded an international debate on the questions of war and
pease as useful." But our Government, not being exactly provisional,
prefers to go on giving the enemy beans.

* * * * *

[Illustration: COMFORTING THOUGHT

When there are no taxis on your return from your holidays:

"OUR TRUE STRENGTH IS TO KNOW OUR OWN WEAKNESS."--_CHARLES KINGSLEY_.]

* * * * *

THE END OF AN EPISODE.

I write this in the beginning of a minor tragedy; if indeed the
severance of any long, helpful and sympathetic association can ever be
so lightly named. For that is precisely what our intercourse has been
these many weeks past; one of nervous and quickly roused irritation on
my part, of swift and gentle ministration on his.

At least once a day we have met during that period (and occasionally,
though rarely, more often), usually in those before-breakfast hours when
the temper of normal man is most exacting and uncertain. But his temper
never varied; the perfection of it was indeed among his finest
qualities. Morning after morning, throughout a time that, as it chanced,
has been full of distress and disappointment, would his soothing and
infinitely gentle touch recall me to content. That stroking care