* * * * *

[Illustration:  THE WEEK-END AND THE EXHAUSTED MIDDLE.

TIME—­Wednesday, 4 P.M.

Client (to office-boy). “CAN I SEE MR. BROWN?”

Office-Boy. “AWAY FOR THE WEEK-END, SIR.”

Client.  “WHICH?” Office-Boy. “NEXT, SIR.”]

* * * * *

“A Christmas Tree Entertainment will be held in Pelican Lake schoolhouse on Tuesday, Dec. 23.  Everybody welcome, no admission.”—­Vermilion Standard (Alberta.  No relation to The Sporting Times).

You are at perfect liberty to hang about outside.

* * * * *

    “No one can deny that it is essential London should have a
    thoroughly equipped shin hospital.”—­Advt. in “Sphere."

No footballer, anyhow.

* * * * *

FROM A GENERAL KNOWLEDGE (SIC) EXAMINATION.

The Cat and Mouse Act is an Act by which a cat may not kill a mouse unless when necessary.

The Apocalypse is an ailment one has apolcalyptic fits.

Sea-legs are when you don’t have legs but a tail.

The All Red Route is the human throat or swallow.

Ten instruments for an orchestra are banjo, pianola, concertina, mandoline, psalteries, shawms, bagpipes, bells to clash with, violins, and bassinette.

To die in harness means to die married.

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

“THE POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL.”

EMERSON says somewhere that there are great ways of borrowing; that, if you can contrive to transmute base metal into fine, nobody will worry as to where you got your base metal from.  But, when it is the other way about, I think you must not be surprised if people ask you where you lifted your gold.  And the answer, in the case of Miss ELEANOR GATES, is that the nuggets were the property of LEWIS CARROLL.  She has taken the sprightly and fantastic humour of Alice in Wonderland, passed it through the alembic (if that is the word) of her American imagination, and the result is something that hardly lets you smile at all.  It is not a typical product of native industry, but even that does not make it much easier for us to grasp the secret of its success over there.  It would seem that nearly all Transatlantic humour, indigenous or adoptive, is apt, like certain wines, to suffer in the process of sea-transit.

Her “Poor Little Rich Girl” is poor because her parents are too rich.  Her father is too busy with finance and her mother with social climbing to spare time for their daughter’s company, so they leave her to the care of governesses and menials.  Her nurse, anxious for an evening out at a picture-palace, gives the child an overdose of sleeping-mixture, with the result that she nearly dies of it.  In the course of delirious dreams she finds herself in the