Yet be not afraid, my lively lad,
  For you shall renew the tooth you had;
  The vacant place shall be filled, you’ll find,
  With another back tooth of a larger kind. 
  But a time will come when, if you lose
  A tooth, as indeed you can’t but choose,
      You must go about
      For ever without;
  And, front or back, it returns to you never;
  You have lost that tooth for ever and ever. 
  So stick to your teeth and accept my apology
  For this easy lesson in odontology.

* * * * *

PUNCH’S ROLL OF HONOUR.

CAPTAIN A.W.  LLOYD, 25th Royal Fusiliers, has been awarded the Military Cross for Distinguished Service in the East African Campaign.  Before the War, for which he volunteered at once, joining the Public Schools Battalion, Captain LLOYD illustrated the Essence of Parliament in these pages.  Mr. Punch offers him his most sincere congratulations upon the high distinction he has won, and is delighted to know that he is completely recovered from the severe head-wound which he received last year.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Mother (to little girl who had been sent to the hen-house for eggs).  “WELL, DEAR, WERE THERE NO EGGS?”

Little Girl.  “NO, MUMMIE, ONLY THE ONE THE HENS USE FOR A PATTERN.”]

* * * * *

THE BEAUTIFUL WORDS.

I have to tell an unvarnished tale of real and recent life in London.  When the absence of impulsive benevolence and public virtue is so often insisted upon it is my duty to put the following facts on record.

It was, as it now always is, a wet day.  The humidity not only descended from a pitiless sky, but ascended from the cruel pavements which cover the stony heart of that inexorable stepmother, London.  Need I say that under these conditions no cabs were obtainable?  In other words it was one of those days, so common of late, when other people engage the cabs first.  They were plentiful enough, full.  One could have been run over and killed by them twenty times between Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus, but all teemed with selfish life.  Men of ferocious concentration and women detestable in their purposefulness were to be seen through the passing windows.  It was a day on which no one ever got out of a cab at all, except to tell it to wait.  No flag was ever up.  Since the blessing of peace began to be ours these days have been the rule.

Not only were the cabs all taken and reserved till to-morrow, but the ’buses were overcrowded too.  A line of swaying men, steaming from the deluge, intervened in every ’bus between two rows of seated women, also steaming.  It was a day on which the conductors and conductresses were always ringing the bell three times.

There was also (for we are very thorough in England) a strike on the Tube and the Underground.