By all means. My cob is an
excellent trotter, so I pledge you, with a bumper well-in-hand.
Good-day!" And so saying, he gaily waved his plumed hat, and rode
away.

* * * * *

"RATHER A LARGE ORDER."--"The Order of the Elephant" conferred on
President CARNOT by the King of Denmark. This should include an Order
for the Grand Trunk, in which to carry it about. The proper person to
receive this Order is evidently the Grand Duke of Tusk-any.

* * * * *

[Illustration: CONFIDENCES OF A MATURE SIREN.

"I ADMIT I'M NOT AS HANDSOME AS I USED TO BE; BUT I'M TWICE AS
DANGEROUS!"]

* * * * *

THE UNHYGIENIC HOUSEHOLDER.

_AFTER READING THE REPORTS OF THE CONGRESS._

[Illustration]

Tell me not in many a column,
I must pull up all my drains;
Or with faces long and solemn,
Threaten me with aches and pains.
Let me end this wintry summer,
'Mid the rain as best I may,
Without calling in the plumber,
For he always comes to stay.

I appreciate the Prince's
Shrewd remarks about our lot;
But the horror he evinces
At our dangers, frights me not.
Science in expostulation,
Shows our rules of health are wrong;
But in days when sanitation
Was unknown, men lived as long.

If the air with microbes thickens,
Like some mirk malefic mist,
Tell me prithee how the dickens
We can manage to exist.
From the poison breathed each minute,
Man ere this had surely died;
When we see the fell things in it,
On the microscopic slide.

I'm aware we're oft caught napping,
And the scientist can say,
That our yawning drains want trapping,
Lest the deadly typhoid stay.
Even with your house in order,
If you go to take the air,
So to speak, outside your border,
Lo! the merry germs are there.

Doctors vow, in tones despotic,
I must dig 'neath basement floors,
Lest diseases called zymotic
Enter in at all my pores.
PARKES, of sanitation master,
Wanted "purity and light;"
I'm content to risk disaster,
With unhygienic night.

* * * * *

QUEER QUERIES.--HYMENEAL.--I have been asked to attend the wedding of
a friend, and respond to the toast of "The Ladies." I have never done
such a thing before, and feel rather nervous about it. My friend says
that I must "try and be very comic." I have thought of one