FELINE AMENITIES.

"Cats' Happy Holiday Home--Wired garden, Home comforts,
References"--_Church Family Newspaper_.

* * * * *

From a notice of "Three Weeks":--

"The Queen of Croatia, one of those convenient operatic
Balham royalties...."--_Liverpool Daily Post_.

Won't Tooting be jealous!

* * * * *

"To one who has been long enough away from the centre of
things almost to forget what it is like, a walk along Pall
Mall yesterday brought some curious reflections. From the
Circus to Hyde Park Corner not a single luxurious private
motor-car or horse-drawn carriage was to be seen. It was
not the Pall Mall of old days."--_Evening Paper_.

No, it seems to have been much more like Piccadilly.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Troop-ship Officer_. "ANYTHING I CAN DO FOR YOU, SIR?"

_Enterprising American_. "I GUESS SO. I'M THE CINEMATOGRAPH OPERATOR
WHO'S GOING TO TAKE A FILM THE FIRST TIME YOU'RE TORPEDOED, AND
I'VE GOT A LETTER FROM YOUR FOLKS INSTRUCTING YOU TO GIVE ME EVERY
FACILITY."]

* * * * *

A SURPRISE PARTY.

"Five-and-thirty wounded Tommies coming to tea and one of them coming
to his death, but he doesn't know it," moaned Emily, and waved a knife
round her head.

I saw what had happened. All this bun-baking and cake-making had been
too much for my poor wife. She had been living in the oven for a week.

"You're overdone. Lie down and try to get a little nap before they
come," I said soothingly. "Everything's ready."

"Will he die without a sound, or will he gurgle?" said Emily, and
brought the knife within an inch of my nose.

"No one is going to die at our tea-party, dear," I said, and ducked.

"Not after swallowing _that_?" shrieked Emily, and lunged at me with
the knife again.

I got it firmly by the handle this time, and I recognised Emily's
special cake-knife, an instrument wrought to perfection by long years
of service, sharp as a razor down both sides, with a flexible tip
that slithered round a basin and scooped up the last morsels of
candied-peel.

But the flexible tip was gone. I understood Emily's distraught
condition. You can replace a diamond tiara; money won't buy a
twenty-year-old cake-knife.

"Try and bear it, dear," I said.

Emily pointed to the table weighed down with Madeiras and rocks and
almonds and sultan