razor should be condemned till it has been "stropped" well and carefully.
And this brings us to the great topic of strops. Some say that soldiers'
old buff belts make the best strops. The Scotch peasantry use a peculiar
hard smooth fungus which grows in decaying elm trees. Our author has
heard that "Government now demands the return of" the old buff belts.
Government cannot want them all for its own use, and perhaps will see to
it that old buff strops once more find an open market. In the lack of
old buff belts, you may mix up tallow and the ashes of burnt newspaper,
and smear this unctuous compound on the strop. People who neglect these
"tips," and who are clumsy, like most of us, may waste a forty-eighth
part of their adult years in shaving. This time is worth economizing,
and with a little forethought, an ideal razor-setter, tallow, buff belts,
burnt newspapers, and the rest, we may shave in five minutes daily.

STREET NOISES.

"If any calm, a calm despair," is the portion of people who would like to
reform, that is to abolish, the street noises of London. These noises
are constantly commented upon with much freedom in the columns of various
contemporaries. Nor is this remarkable, for persons who are occupied
with what is called "brainwork," are peculiarly sensitive to the
disturbances of the streets. Sometimes they cannot sleep till morning,
sometimes they can only sleep in the earlier watches of the night, and,
as a rule, they cannot write novels, or articles, or treatises; they
cannot compose comic operas, or paint, in the midst of a row. Now, the
streets of London are the scenes of rows at every hour of night and day-
light. It is not the roll of carriages and carts that provokes
irritation, and drives the sensitive man or woman half mad. Even the
whistling of the metropolitan trains may, perhaps, be borne with if the
drivers are not too ambitious artists, and do not attempt fantasias and
variations on their powerful instrument. The noises that ruin health,
temper, and power of work; the noises that cause an incalculable waste of
time, money, and power, are all voluntary, and perhaps preventable. Let
us examine the working hours of the nervous or irritable musician,
mathematician, man of letters, or member of Parliament. On second
thoughts, the last may be omitted, as if he cannot sleep in a tedious
debate, his case is beyond cure.

"Not bromide of potassium
Nor all the drowsy speech