* * * * *

A MODEST ESTIMATE.

From a publisher’s advertisement:—­

    “Baroness Orczy has laid the world under a fresh debt of
    gratitude. 7/- net.”—­“Times” Literary Supplement.

* * * * *

    “The question one could naturally put is, ’Has the
    millennium arrived, when the lion and the lamb shall lay
    together?’”—­Monthly Paper.

Let’s hope, at all events, that the produce won’t be a cockatrice’s egg.

* * * * *

“This is the anniversary of the death of Robert Southey in 1843.  Perhaps his most celebrated poem is the delightful ’Ode to a Skylark,’ the beginning of which ‘Hail to thee, blithe spirit,’ is known to every school child.”—­New York Evening Journal.

It seems that Truth still stands in need of propaganda in America.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Amateur Photographer (on a conducted tour in France)."CHARMING SPOT; BUT RATHER DISAPPOINTING.  I QUITE HOPED IT WOULD HAVE BEEN ALL SMASHED UP.”]

* * * * *

FINANCIAL INTELLIGENCE.

The decision of The Westminster Gazette to return to its old figure of a penny must not be taken as a sign that prices generally are coming down.  On the contrary there is every indication that they are rising and will still rise, as the following symptomatic scraps of news, gathered from all parts of the country, go to prove:—­

The First Commissioner of Oaths states that “twopenny damns” will, until further notice, be eight-pence each.

* * * * *

A schoolmaster in Birmingham who propounded the old question about a herring and a half costing three half-pence has been put under restraint as a dangerous lunatic.

* * * * *

If the information that reaches us from a little bird is correct, a boycott of sparrows is in progress, owing to their inveterate habit of saying, “Cheep!  Cheep!”

* * * * *

Mr. HEINEMANN announces that, as a concession to modern susceptibilities, he has decided to alter the title of Mr. HERGESHEIMER’S successful novel, The Three Black Pennys to The Three Black Half-crowns.

* * * * *

All guinea-pigs and guinea-fowls will from the present date onwards be two guineas.

* * * * *

In the best profiteering circles cigars are now lighted with spills made of one-pound, notes, instead of, as during the war, ten-shilling ones.

* * * * *

A well-known orchestral leader states that there is a serious movement afoot to popularise “The Dear Home Land” as an encore for the National Anthem.