Matilda swooned.  The air was certainly very close down there.

* * * * *

THE WAR-DREAM.

  I Wish I did not dream of France
    And spend my nights in mortal dread
  On miry flats where whizz-bangs dance
    And star-shells hover o’er my head,
  And sometimes wake my anxious spouse
  By making shrill excited rows
  Because it seems a hundred “hows”
        Are barraging the bed.

  I never fight with tigers now
    Or know the old nocturnal mares;
  The house on fire, the frantic cow,
    The cut-throat coming up the stairs
  Would be a treat; I almost miss
  That feeling of paralysis
  With which one climbed a precipice
        Or ran away from bears.

  Nor do I dream the pleasant days
    That sometimes soothe the worst of wars,
  Of omelettes and estaminets
    And smiling maids at cottage-doors;
  But in a vague unbounded waste
  For ever hide with futile haste
  From 5.9’s precisely placed,
        And all the time it pours.

  Yet, if I showed colossal phlegm
    Or kept enormous crowds at bay,
  And sometimes won the D.C.M.,
    It might inspire me for the fray;
  But, looking back, I do not seem
  To recollect a single dream
  In which I did not simply scream
        And try to run away.

  And when I wake with flesh that creeps
    The only solace I can see
  Is thinking, if the Prussian sleeps,
    What hideous visions his must be! 
  Can all my dreams of gas and guns
  Be half as rotten as the Hun’s? 
  I like to think his blackest ones
        Are when he dreams of me.

  A.P.H.

* * * * *

    “Street lamp-posts in Chiswick are all being painted white
    by female labour.”—­Times.

The authorities were afraid, we understand, that if males were employed they would paint the town red.

* * * * *

    “Four groups of raiders tried to attack London on Saturday
    night.  If there were eight in each group, this meant thirty-two
    Gothas.”—­Evening Standard.

In view of the many loose and inaccurate assertions regarding the air-raids, it is agreeable to meet with a statement that may be unreservedly accepted.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Lodger (who has numbered his lumps of sugar with lead pencil).  “OH, MRS. JARVIS, I AM UNABLE TO FIND NUMBERS 3, 7 AND 18.”]

* * * * *

THE DOOR.

Once upon a time there was a sitting-room, in which, when everyone had gone to bed, the furniture, after its habit, used to talk.  All furniture talks, although the only pieces with voices that we human beings can hear are clocks and wicker-chairs.  Everyone has heard a little of the conversation of wicker-chairs, which usually turn upon the last person to be seated in them; but other furniture is more self-centered.