health.]

Stretched prone upon my couch of pain,
An ache in every limb,
Fell influenza having slain
My customary _vim_,
I mused, disconsolate, about
The pattern of my pall,
When lo! I heard a step without
And Thomson came to call.

"Your ruddy health," I told him, "mocks
A hand too weak to grip
The tea-cup with its captive ox
And raise it to my lip;"
To which he answered he had come
To bring for my delight
Red posies of geranium
And roses pink and white.

'Twas kind of Thomson thus to seek
To mitigate my gloom,
But why did he proceed to speak
Of how he'd reared each bloom,
Telling in language far from terse
On what his blossoms fed
And how he made the greenfly curse
The day that it was bred?

He told me how he rose at dawn
To titivate the land
('Twas here that I began to yawn
Behind a courteous hand),
And how he thought his favourite pea
Had found the soil too dry
(And here I feared my yawns would be
Apparent to his eye).

On fruit and blossom good and bad
He rambled on unchecked,
Until his conversation had
Such curative effect
That in the end it drove away
My weak despondent mood.
I clasped his hand and blessed the day
He came to do me good.

* * * * *

"MORE DEARER PUBLICATIONS."--_Daily Mail._

More dearer nor what they was? Dear, dear!

* * * * *

From _Young India_, the organ of Mr. GANDHI:--

"In our last issue the number of those in receipt of relief is given at
500. This is a printer's devil. The number is 5,000."

Mr. GANDHI ought to exorcise that devil.

* * * * *

"The tests were entirely satisfactory, and the pilot manoeuvred for a
quarter of an hour at a height of 500 metres and a speed of 150
millimetres an hour."--_Aeronautics._

This is believed to be the nearest approach to "hovering" that has yet been
achieved by a machine.

* * * * *

NITRATES.

All alone I went a-walking by the London Docks one day,
For to see the ships discharging in the basins where they lay;
And the cargoes that I saw there they were every sort and kind,
Every blessed brand of merchandise a man could bring to mind;
There were things in crates and boxes, there was stuff in bags and bales,
There were tea-chests wra