“Let us go hence, my heart;
  she will not hear” (Swinburne).
       * * * * *

[Illustration:  “HEARD THE LATEST RUMOUR UP FROM THE BACK, GEORGE?  WAR’S GOING TO BE OVER NEXT WEEK.”

“HO.  WELL, I HOPE IT DON’T UPSET MY GOING ON LEAVE NEXT TUESDAY.”]

* * * * *

CIGARISTICS

    ["According to an enterprising American scientist a man’s
    character can be told from the way he smokes a cigar.”—­Weekly
    Paper.]

For, instance, a man who snatches a cigar from somebody else’s mouth and smokes it himself may be assumed to be of a grasping disposition.

The man who while smoking a cigar burns his finger is a man of few words and quick of action.  Plumbers never burn their fingers like that.

The man who smokes his cigar right through without removing it from his mouth is a deep thinker.  Lord NORTHCLIFFE always smokes one cigar right through before deciding what England really wants, and two when he has to decide which Cabinet Minister must go.

The man who accepts a cigar from a friend, lights it, sniffs and drops it behind his chair has no character worth mentioning.

* * * * *

Mem. for Agriculturists.

Protect the birds and the insects will be in their crops.  Destroy the birds and the crops will be in the insects.

* * * * *

“S.P. (Lincoln).—­Humming-birds don’t hum with their mouths.  The humming is the vibration of their wings while flying—­for the same reason that a blue-bottle or an aeroplane hums.”—­Pearson’s Weekly.

So it is not the pilot rubbing his feet together, as we had been taught to believe.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Uncle.  “BY JOVE, THERE’S A NICE QUIET-LOOKING GIRL JUST COME IN.  WONDER WHO SHE IS.” Niece.  “HAVEN’T THE FOGGIEST. MUST BE PRE-WAR.”]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(By Mr. Punch’s Staff of Learned Clerks.)

The Safety Candle (CASSELL) might have been called, but for the fact that the title has been used already, A Comedy of Age.  For this is what it is—­only perhaps less a comedy than a tragedy. Agnes Tempest was called the Safety Candle, for the ingenious reason that, though attractive, she burnt nobody’s wings.  Returning as a middle-aging widow, after an unhappy wifehood in Africa, she meets on the boat two persons, Captain Brangwyn, a young man, and a girl-mother calling herself Antonina Pisa.  Hence the tears. Brangwyn she marries, doubtfully, half-defiantly, despite the difference in years between them; Antonina is taken as a companion and very soon developes into a sick-nurse.