A dear old lady writes that she is no longer nervous about air-raids, now that her neighbourhood has been provided with an anticraft airgun.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  The air-raid Season.

The result of A little unassuming advertisement:  “CELLARMAN
wanted.—­Apply, 82, ——­ Street, W.”]

* * * * *

Food Economy in Ireland.

“Gloves, stockings, boots and shoes betoken the energy and meal of the day, something tasty is desirable, and a very economical dish of this kind can be made by making...”—­Belfast Evening Telegraph.

* * * * *

Zepp-flighting in the HAUTES Alpes.

TO J.M.

  Recall, dear John, a certain day
    Back in the times of long ago—­
  A stuffy old estaminet
    Under the great peaks fledged with snow;
  The Spring that set our hearts rejoicing
    As up the serried mountains’ bar
  We climbed our tortuous way Rolls-Roycing
        From Gap to Col Bayard.

  Little we dreamed, though that high air
    Quickens imagination’s flight,
  What monstrous bird and very rare
    Would in these parts some day alight;
  How, like a roc of Arab fable,
    A Zepp en route from London town,
  Trying to find its German stable,
        Would here come blundering down.

  The swallows—­you remember? yes?—­
    Northward, just then, were heading straight;
  No hint they dropped by which to guess
    That other fowl’s erratic fate;
  An inner sense supplied their vision;
    Not one of them contused his scalp
  Or lost his feathers in collision
        Bumping against an Alp.

  But they, the Zepp-birds, flopped and barged
    From Luneville to Valescure
  (Where we of old have often charged
    The bunkers of the Cote d’Azur);
  And half a brace—­so strange and far a
    Course to the South it had to shape—­
  Is still expected in Sahara
        Or possibly the Cape.

  In happier autumns you and I
    (You by your art and I by luck)
  Have pulled the pheasant off the sky
    Or flogged to death the flighting duck;
  But never yet—­how few the chances
    Of pouching so superb a swag—­
  Have we achieved a feat like France’s
        Immortal gas-bag bag.

  O.S.

* * * * *

Purple Patches from lord Yorick’s great book.

(SPECIAL REVIEW.)

Lord Yorick’s Reminiscences, just published by the house of Hussell, abound in genial anecdote, in which the “personal note” is lightly and gracefully struck, in welcome contrast to the stodgy political memoirs with which we have been surfeited of late.  We append some extracts, culled at random from these jocund pages:—­