AS YOU LIKE IT OR DON’T.

SCENE.—­Bois do Boulogne.

Enter Orlando.

  Orlando (reading from sheet of paper).

  I should be extremely gloomy
  If they pinched from me my Fiume.

[Pins composition on tree.

Hang there, my verse, in witness of my love. [Exit.

* * * * *

ANOTHER IMPENDING APOLOGY.

    “If this pianist is not heard again in Shanghai, he will carry away
    with him the grateful thanks of our music-lovers.”

    Shanghai Mercury.

* * * * *

    “This debate will immediately precede the introduction of the
    Budget, and will, let us hope, inaugurate a campaign for national
    entrenchment.”—­Provincial Paper.

Ah! if only, as taxpayers, we could dig ourselves in!

* * * * *

THE HOUSING QUESTION.

Someone estimated the other day that England is short just now of five hundred thousand houses.  This is a miscalculation.  She is really short of five hundred thousand and one, the odd one being the house that we are looking for and cannot find.

We have discovered many houses in our tour of London, but none that gives complete satisfaction.  Either the locality or the shape or the price is all wrong; or, as more often happens, the fixtures.  By the fixtures I mean, of course, the people who are already in the place and refuse to come out of it; London is full of houses with the wrong people in them.

“I wonder,” says Celia, standing outside some particularly desirable residence, “if we dare go in and ask them if they wouldn’t like to move.”

“We can’t live there unless they do,” I agreed.  “It would be so crowded.”

“After all, I suppose they took it from somebody else some time or other.  I don’t see why we shouldn’t take it from them.”

“As soon as they put a ‘TO LET’ board outside we will.”

Celia hangs about hopefully for some days after this, waiting for a man to come along with a “TO LET” board over his shoulder.  As soon as he plants it in the front garden she means to rush forward, strike out the “TO,” and present herself to the occupier with her cheque-book in her hand.  It is thus, she assures me, that the best houses are snapped up; but it is weary waiting, and I cannot take my turn on guard, for I must stay at home and earn the money which the landlord (sordid fellow) will want.

Sometimes we search the advertisement columns in the papers in the hope of finding something that may do.

“Here’s one,” I announced one morning; “’For American millionaires and others.  Fifteen bathrooms—­’ Oh, no, that’s too big.”

“Isn’t there anything for English hundredaires?” said Celia.

“Here’s one that says ‘reasonable offer taken.’”