I make music on the grass
Before the storm-clouds break;
He stops his ears and cries "Alas!"
Because _he_ cannot make
With all his fiddlers fine
A melody like mine.

LE BRUN is watching me, I know,
His palette on his thumb,
To catch the glory and the glow
That dazzle as I come;
So be it--but let MOLIERE go,
And LULLI crack his drum;
They do but waste their time;
Minstrel I am, and mime.

Men say the KING is like the sun,
And from his wig they spin
The golden webs that, one by one,
Draw Spain and Flanders in;
He will grow proud ere they have done,
A most egregious sin,
And one to which my mind
Has never yet declined.

* * * * *

QUEER CATTLE.

"Of the 217 sheep sold at the Sunderland Mart, yesterday, there
was a very large percentage of heifers and bullocks."--_Newcastle
Daily Journal_.

* * * * *

News from the Russian Front: Pop goes the Oesel.

* * * * *

"Chauffeur Gardener wanted, titled gentleman."--_Glasgow Herald_.

We have often mistaken a taxi-driver for a lord.

* * * * *

PRESENCE OF MIND.

The train came to one of those sudden stops in which the hush caused
by the contrast between the rattle of the wheels and their silence is
almost painful. During these pauses one is conscious of conversation
in neighbouring compartments, without however hearing any distinct
words.

There were several of us, strangers to each other, who hitherto had
been minding our own business, but under the stress of this untoward
thing became companionable.

A man at each window craned his body out, but withdrew it without
information.

"I hope," said another, "there's not an accident."

"I have always heard," said a fourth, "that in a railway accident
presence of mind is not so valuable as absence of body"--getting off
this ancient pleasantry as though it were his own.

The motionlessness of the train was so absolute as to be
disconcerting; also a scandal. The business of trains, between
stations, is to get on. We had paid our money, not for undue
stoppages, but for movement in the direction of our various goals;
and it was infamous.

Somebody said something of the kind.

"Better be held up now," said a sententious man, "than be killed for
want of prudence."

No one was prepared