-nibbling rabbit!

* * * * *

A LITTLE STRANGER.

["At the meeting of the Bermondsey Vestry, the Medical Officer
reported that water drawn from the service-pipe of a house
in the Jamaica Road, had been submitted to him. The water was
clear, but it contained a live horse-leech."--_Daily Paper_.]

Oh, into our domestic pipes
They crawl and creep by stealth,
The gruesome creatures known unto
An Officer of Health!
Harken to him of Bermondsey,
Think what his murmurings teach,
"The water seemed quite limpid, _but_--
It did contain a Leech!"

The service-pipe was sound and good
In the Jamaica Road;
The cistern there had harboured ne'er
Microbe, or newt, or toad;
No clearer water softly laved
A coral island beach;
So thought the householder, until--
He found that awful Leech!

Perchance he was a temperance foe
To alcoholic drink,
And from all dalliance with Bung
Did scrupulously shrink.
Yet now to forms of fluid sin
He'll cotton, all and each;
He does not like such liquors, _but_--
Prefers them to a Leech!

Our pipes will not be pipes of peace
If such things hap, I trow;
And as for Water Trusts, 'tis hard
To trust in water now.
Oh, Co. of Southwark and Vauxhall,
We ratepayers beseech,
Double your filtering charges, _but_--
Remove the loathly Leech!

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

[Illustration]

There is a judicial review of GEORGE MEREDITH's work in the
_Quarterly_ for October--masterly, too, quoth the Baron, as striking
a balance between effect and defect, and finding so much to be duly
said in high praise of the diffuse and picturesquely-circumnavigating
Novelist through whose labyrinthine pages the simple Baron finds it
hard to thread his way, and yet keep the clue. When the unskippingly
conscientious peruser of GEORGE M.'s novels is most desirous that the
author shall go ahead, GEORGE, like an Irish cardriver, will stop to
"discoorse us," and at such length, and so diffusely, and with such a
wealth of eccentric word-coming and grammar-dodging, that at last the
Baron gasps, choked by the rolling billows of sonorously booming or
boomingly sonorous words, battles with the waves, ducks, and comes
up again breathlessly, wondering where he may be, and what it was
all about. "Story! God bless you, I haven't much to tell, Sir!" sa