CHARIVARIA.

President Wilson is stated to have played several keen games of “shuffle-board” on the George Washington.  As it is an open secret that Lord Robert Cecil has been polishing up his “shove-halfpenny” in the billiard-room of the Hotel Majestic interesting developments are anticipated.

***

Primroses, daisies and wallflowers are in full bloom in many parts of the country and young lambs may now be seen frisking in the meadows.  Can the poet laureate be waiting for someone to get sun-stroke?

***

The Commission on the Responsibilities and Crimes of the War have not yet decided that the ex-Kaiser is guilty.  At the same time it is said that they have an idea that he knew something about it.

***

At a Belfast football match last week the winning team, the police and the referee were mobbed by the partisans of the losing side.  Local sportsmen condemn the attack on the winning team as a dangerous innovation.

***

The L.C.C. is training munition girls to be cooks.  We understand that the velocity and range will be clearly stamped on the bottom of all pork-pies.

***

A Stromness fisherman, on opening a halibut, found a large cormorant in its stomach.  Cormorants, of course, are not fastidious birds.  They don’t mind where they nest.

***

The eclipse of the sun on May 28th should be a great success, if we may judge by the immense time it has taken over rehearsals.

***

Inspector J.G.  Ogham, chief of the Portsmouth Fire Brigade, who is about to retire, has attended over two thousand fires.  Indeed it is said that most of the local fires know him by sight.

***

“Ghost stories,” says a contemporary, “are being spread about vacant houses in Dublin to decrease the demand for them.”  The old caretaker’s trick of training a couple of cockroaches to jump out at the house-hunter is quite useless to-day.

***

Hull merchants complain that only one train leaves Hull per day on which wet fish can travel.  The idea of bringing the fish to Billingsgate under their own steam has already been ventilated.

***

Found insensible with a bottle of sherry in his pocket, an East Ham labourer was fined ten shillings for being drunk.  It is believed that had he been carrying the sherry anywhere else nothing could have saved him.

***

An absconding Trade Society treasurer last week hit upon a novel idea.  He ran away with his own wife.

***

“Is nothing going to be done to stop the incursion of the sea at Walton-on-the-Naze?” asks a contemporary.  Have they tried the effect of placing notice-boards along the front?

***

For the first time the public have been admitted to a meeting of the Beckenham Council.  It is pleasant to find that the importance of good wholesome entertainment is not being lost sight of in some places.