CHARIVARIA.

There is no truth in the report that one of the most telling lines in the National Anthem is to be revised so as to read “Confound their Scandiknavish tricks.”

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Grave fears are expressed in certain quarters that the Stockholm Conference has been “spurlos versenkt.”

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Someone has stolen the clock from St. Winefride’s Church, Wimbledon.  We hope that the culprit has responded to the universal appeals in the newspapers which urged him to put the clock back on Sunday last.

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An Englishwoman living in the East has a servant-girl who, when told about the War, remarked, “What war?” Another snub for the Kaiser.

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“A Vegetarian” writes to accuse Lord RHONDDA of reducing the price of meat on purpose.

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Tube fares are to be raised.  An alternative project of issuing special tickets, entitling the holder to standing room, was reluctantly abandoned.

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The Thames, says a contemporary, has come into its own again as a holiday resort.  Many riparian owners, on the other hand, are complaining that it has come into theirs.

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A trades union of undertakers’ mutes has been formed.  Their first act, it is believed, will be to strike for a fifty-year life.

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We have been asked to explain that the Second Division in which Mr. E.D.  Morel is now serving is not the one that fought at the battle of Mons.

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Two escaped German prisoners have been arrested at Wokingham by a local grocer.  The report that he charged twopence each for delivery is without foundation.

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At Leith Hill, in Surrey, trees are being felled by a number of unescaped German prisoners.

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“Beans running to seed,” says an informative daily paper, “should be picked and the small beans extracted.”  But the old custom of lying in wait for them on the return journey and stunning them with a flail still retains many adherents in the slow-moving countryside.

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“I am the father of sweeps,” declared an elderly employer to the West Kent Tribunal.  He afterwards admitted, however, that the secret correspondence of Count LUXBURG had not been brought to his notice.

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Acting, explained an applicant to the House of Commons’ Tribunal, is regarded by many as a work of national importance.  The Tribunal have generously arranged for him to storm a few barns in Flanders.

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Sixty-eight thousand persons, it is stated, have visited the maze at Hampton Court this season.  Others have been content to stay at home and study the sugar regulations.

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The admission fee to a concert recently held for the benefit of the Southwark Military Hospital was one egg.  None of the gate money, it seems, reached the performers.