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"HIGH COMMISSIONER PAYS CALLS.

Jerusalem, August 27.--The High Commissioner visited yesterday
afternoon the tomb of Abraham, Sarah, Rebecca, Isaac, Jacob and
Leah in the Cave of Makpela at Hebron."--_Egyptian Mail_.

No flowers, by request.

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[Illustration: THE GREAT REPUDIATION.

MR. SMILLIE. "HERE, HOP IT, OR YOU'LL SPOIL THE WHOLE SHOW. YOU DON'T
COME ON TILL MY NEXT TRICK."]

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[Illustration: _M.F.H_. "WHY THE DEUCE AREN'T YOU WITH HOUNDS? THEY'RE
IN THE NEXT PARISH BY THIS."

_New Whip_ (_rib-roasting very bad cub-hunter_). "'TAIN'T SAFE TO GO
NEAR 'EM WITH THIS 'ORSE; THEY MIGHT THINK 'E WAS FOR EATIN'."]

* * * * *

THE BEN AND THE BOOT.

Whither in these littered and overcrowded islands should one flee to
escape the spectacle of outworn and discarded boots? I should go to a
mountain-top and amongst mountain-tops I should choose the highest. I
should scale the summit of Ben Nevis.

Yet it is but a few days since I saw on that proud eminence the
unmistakable remains of an ordinary walking boot.

It reposed on the perilous edge of a snowdrift that even in summer
curves giddily over the lip of the dreadful gulf over which the
eastern precipice beetles. There is ever a certain pathos about
discarded articles of apparel: a baby's outgrown shoe, a girl's
forgotten glove, an abandoned bowler; but the situation of this boot,
thus high uplifted towards the eternal stars, gave to it a mystery, a
grandeur, a sublimity that held me long in contemplation.

How came it there?

The path that winds up that grey mountain is rough; its harsh stones
and remorseless gradients take toll of leather as of flesh. Yet half a
sole and a sound upper are better than no boot; and what climber but
would postpone till after his descent the discarding of his damaged
footgear?

Could it be, I asked myself, the relic and evidence of an inhuman
crime? Was it possible that some party of climbers, arriving at the
top lunchless and desperately hungry, had sacrificed their plumpest,
disposing of his clothes over the cliff, but failing to hole out with
this tell-tale boot?

But no, I bethought me of the price of leather. They would have
reserved the boots, even at the risk of suspicion. Moreover, no one
would ever reach that exacting altitude in a state of succulence.

A glow of sympat