ention to him. His claws
are clipped, his teeth have been filed down. He shouts and struts,
unregarded. For we live, of course, in milder and more reasonable
days, and the GRUBLETS can no longer find a popular market for their
wares.

Only one question remains. How in the world can even you, oh respected
SWAGGER, have derived any pleasure from witnessing the performances
that GRUBLET went through, after you had persuaded him that he was
a man of some importance? I do not expect an answer, and remain as
before,

DIOGENES ROBINSON.

* * * * *

IN BANCO.--The stability of the concern having been effectually proved
by the way in which the Birkbeckers got out of the fire and out of the
trying pan-ic, and the ease with which they were quite at home to the
crowds of callers coming to inquire after their health, should earn
for them the subsidiary title of the Birk-beck-and-call Bank.

* * * * *

[Illustration: A GOOD BEGINNING.

_Uncle Jack_ (_Umpire_). "LOVE ALL!"

_Monsieur le Baron_. "LOVE ALL? PARBLEU! JE CROIS BIEN! ZEY ARE
_ADORABLES_, YOUR NIECES!"]

* * * * *

PAN THE POSTER.

(_A MODERN PERVERSION OF MRS. BROWNING'S POWERFUL POEM, "A MUSICAL
INSTRUMENT."_)

["We are presented just now with two spectacles, which may
help us to take modest and diffident views of the progress of
the species.... At home there is an utterly unreasonable and
unaccountable financial panic among the depositors in the
Birkbeck Bank, while in America the free and enlightened
democracy of a portion of New York State has suddenly relapsed
into primitive barbarism under the influence of fear of
cholera."--_The Times_.]

What is he doing, our new god Pan,
Far from the reeds and the river?
Spreading mischief and scattering ban,
Screening 'neath "knickers" his shanks of a goat,
And setting the wildest rumours afloat,
To set the fool-mob a-shiver.

He frightened the shepherds, the old god Pan,[1]
Him of the reeds by the river;
Afeared of his faun-face, Arcadians ran;
Unsoothed by the pipes he so deftly could play,
The shepherds and travellers scurried away
From his face by forest or river.

And back to us, sure, comes the great god Pan,
With his pipes from the reeds by the river;
Starting a scare, as the goat-god can,
Making a Man a mere wind-swayed reed,
An