letter to a newspaper without an
allusion to its "widely circulated columns?"

Why can a young gentleman never take to yachting without strengthening
his language with "fo'ksle" expletives?

Why at a dinner party is it never thought permissible to call for
cabbage except by its genteel synonym of "greens?"

Why does a cabman consider he degrades himself by acting civilly?

Why in a lodging-house can you never get your shaving-water without
ringing twice for it?

Why do people with the smallest rooms invariably give the largest
parties?

Why cannot musical critics speak of a voice without puzzling everybody
by calling it an "organ?"

Why do fashionable people consider they lose _caste_ by writing legibly?

Why cannot a husband get home late from a dinner-party without assuring
his wife he was "the first to leave?"

And why cannot a wife inflict a "charring-day" upon her husband without
the additional torture of a cold leg of mutton?

* * * * *

GREAT THEATRICAL STRIKE.--A Combat of Six at the Victoria.

* * * * *

[Illustration: LORD SID-NEE'S SHOW.

_The Ardent Lover_, CHING-BANG-BUNG, _at present residing among the
island Barbarians, writes to the Star of his Brain_, LOLLUM SQUINNYI,
_daughter of_ HANGO JOWDOB, _wealthy merchant of Tseen-ki, with a wart
on his nose_.]

* * * * *

"MOONLIGHT ON THE WATERS OF MY SOUL,

"Adoring your silver slipper with its buckle of emeralds, profoundly
respecting the gilded toad which lies before your cerulean door in the
light of a scraper, nay, venerating the marble slab that forms the
threshold of the house where lives the angelic daughter of HANGO JOWDOB
with the wart on his nose, I send you this illuminated rescript. Honour
it.

"Yesterday, O LOLLUM, was a festival among these barbarians, and the
Chief Magistrate of their chief city went in procession to swear oaths,
and to bid other judges to devour sea-tortoises with him. A scribe named
_Punch_, and altogether the wisest and comeliest man I have ever seen
(excepting HANGO JOWDOB, with the wart on his nose, who will probably
read this) gave me a seat in his mansion, which overlooketh the highway.
By CON-FU-ZEE, O LOLLUM, but these barbarians have something in them,
after all. Their Chief Magistrate is a vendor of teas, and the array was
got up to remind the spectators of the Flowery Land whence cometh the
fragrant l