“Did she get out to Siam, then?”

“Oh no, Sir, no fear.  The crew ran her on the Goodwin Sands on her trial trip, and there she stuck for a year.  Before they got her off the Siamese had been released from their bargain by the Hague Tribunal, Mr. ROOSEVELT had resigned the Presidency of China for that of Mexico, and the new President sold the Chulalongkorn back to Great Britain.  Of course by that time she was quite obsolete, so they called her the Indefensible, and put a nucleus crew on board for a few months.  Then when Mr. LLOYD GEORGE became Prime Minister, they offered her to Canada as a gift; but the Canadians didn’t like her name.  And when Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL came back last month he decided that she was to be made a target; but last week I heard she was to be sold for scrap-iron.”

“Then whom does she belong to now?”

“Well, Sir, some says she belongs to Canada, and others say she’s British, and others say she belongs to Mr. CHURCHILL, but in a manner of speaking I think she rightly belongs to Mrs. Tompkins and me.”

* * * * *

    “On making enquiries at the Hospital this afternoon, we learn
    that the deceased is as well as can be expected.”—­Jersey
    Evening Post.

It would, of course, be foolish to expect much.

* * * * *

A NEW BOOK OF BEAUTY.

A hundred years ago they had line, engravings by CHARLES HEATH, and the long-necked, ringleted ladies looked wistfully or simperingly at you.  I have several examples:  Caskets, Albums, Keepsakes.

This book is different.  The steel engravers have long since all died of starvation; and here are photographs only, but there are many more of them, and (strange innovation!) there are more gentlemen than ladies.  For this preponderance there is a good commercial reason, as any student of the work will quickly discover, for we are now entering a sphere of life where the beauty of the sterner sex (if so severe a word can be applied to such sublimation of everything that is soft and voluptuous and endearing) is more considered than that of the other.  Beautiful ladies are here in some profusion, but the first place is for beautiful and guinea-earning gentlemen.

In the old Books of Beauty one could make a choice.  There was always one lady supremely longer-necked, more wistful or more simpering than the others.  But in this new Book of Beauty one turns the pages only to be more perplexed.  The embarrassment of riches is too embarrassing.  I have been through the work a score of times and am still wondering on whom my affections and admiration are most firmly fixed.

This new Book of Beauty has a very different title from the old ones.  It is called The Pekingese, and is the revised edition for 1914.