***

We congratulate The Daily Mail on finding a peculiarly appropriate topic for discussion at Christmas time.  It was “Too Much Cramming.”

***

Thieves broke into the vestry during the service and stole the gold watch and chain which the minister preaching the Christmas sermon at Marylebone Presbyterian church had left there.  The minister must be sorry now that he did not trust his congregation.

***

Mr. GEORGE BAKER, of Brentwood, received a presentation the other day on completing his fiftieth year as a carol singer.  He mentioned that once, at the beginning of his career, his carol party was broken up by an angry London householder, who fired a pistol-shot from his bedroom window.  The modern Londoner, we fear, is decadent, and lacks the necessary spirit.

***

Dr. MARY WILLIAMS, medical inspector of schools under the Worcestershire County Council, has discovered, as a result of investigations, that there is a higher proportion of nervous, excitable children among the red-haired ones than among the others.  We have ourselves known more than one such lad lose all self-control merely upon being addressed as “Carrots.”

***

Is a motor-car, it is being asked, feminine—­like a ship?  A correspondent in The Times refers to her as a lady.  Presumably because she wears a bonnet.

***

A correspondent writes to The Pall Mall Gazette asking whether there is anything in the idea that a large number of used penny postage stamps will enable a person to be received into a charitable institution.  We have always understood that the collector of one million of these stamps is admitted into a lunatic asylum without having to pass the entrance examination.

***

A lion from the bush, attracted by the roaring of its caged relatives in a circus at Wankies, South Africa, suddenly made its way into the menagerie.  The beast was ultimately driven away by attendants armed with red-hot pokers, but five persons were seriously injured in the panic.  The ticket-collector who let the animal in without payment has been reprimanded.

***

Speaking of MEDWIN’S Revised Life of Shelley a critic says, in a contemporary:  “He puts the well-known boats of Archimedes into blank verse.”  These boats were, we presume, fitted with ARCHIMEDES’ famous screw?

***

The Hindujah barrage on the Euphrates has now been completed by an English firm, and will provide water for the Garden of Eden.  The structure, we presume, is a blend of the ADAM style with NOAH’S architecture.

***

“TRAINING SHIP OFF THE EMBANKMENT” is a heading which attracts our attention.  This seems a much better idea than having the vessel on the Embankment, where it would be in everyone’s way.

* * * * *

THE LAST STRAW.