flocks may crop
  By Sussex gorse or Cheviot’s grassy top,
  A myriad herds tumultuously snort
  From Palos Verdes eastward to Del Norte,
  Or where the fierce vaquero’s bold bravado
  Resounds about the Llano Estacado;
  Though every abattoir works overtime
  And every stall in Smithfield groans with prime
  Cuts, from thy lips the ready lie falls pat,
  How thou art sold clean out of this and that,
  But will oblige me, just for old time’s sake,
  With half a shin bone or some hard flank steak;
  Or (if with mutton I prefer to deck
  My festive board) the scraggy end of neck. 
  And once, when goaded to a desperate stand,
  I wrung a sirloin from thy grudging hand,
  Did not thy boy, a cheeky little brute
  With shifty eyes, mislay the thing en route,
  Depositing at my address the bones
  Intended for the dog of Mr. Jones?

  I sometimes think that never runs so thin
  The milk as when it leaves the milkman’s tin;
  That every link the sausageman prepares
  Harbours some wandering Towser unawares. 
  And Binns, the baker (whom a murrain seize!),
  Immune from fraud’s accustomed penalties,
  Sells me a stuff compound of string and lead,
  And has the nerve to name the substance bread. 
  But deafer far to the voice of conscience grown
  The type that cuts me off a pound of bone
  Wherefrom an ounce of fat forlornly drops,
  And calls the thing two shillings’ worth of chops;
  More steeped in crime the heart that dares to fleece
  My purse of eighteen-pence for one small piece
  Of tripe, whereof, when times were not so hard,
  The price was fourpence for the running yard!

  Wherefore I hate thee, butcher, and would pass
  Untempted of thy viands.  But, alas! 
  The spirit that essays in master flights
  To sip the honey from Parnassus’ heights,
  That daily doth his Pegasus bestride
  And keeps the War from spoiling on the side,
  Fails to be fostered by the sensuous sprout
  Or with horse carrots blow its waistcoat out. 
  So, though I loathe thee, butcher, I must buy
  The tokens of thy heartless usury. 
  Yet oft I dream that in some life to come,
  Where no sharp pangs assail the poet’s tum,
  Athwart high sunburnt plains I drive my plough,
  Untouched by earth’s gross appetites, and thou,
  My ox, my beast, goest groaning at the tugs,
  And do I spare thy feelings?  No, by jugs! 
  With tireless lash I probe thy leaden feet,
  And beat and beat and beat and beat and beat.

  ALGOL.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  IF EVERYBODY HELPED. Every bond you buy goes to tie up the Kaiser.]

* * * * *

ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

Monday, November 26th.—­Rather a jolly day in the House of Commons.  It was pleasant to hear Lord WOLMER, ingenuous youth, explaining, on behalf of the War Trade Department, that there was no danger of an unusually large consignment of rubber bathing-caps finding their way from Switzerland to the heads of German Fraueleins.  To Colonel YATE belongs the credit of pointing out that people do not bathe in Switzerland in the winter.