New fads and new fancies are reigning supreme,
  And calomel one day will be but a dream;
  While folks have asserted a chemist might toil
  Through his shelves, and find out he had no castor oil;
  While as to Infusions, they’ve long taken wings,
  And they’d think you quite mad for prescribing such things.

  The fashion to-day is a tincture so strong,
  That, if dosing yourself, you are sure to go wrong. 
  What men learnt in the past they say brings them no pelf,
  And the well-tried old remedies rest on the shelf. 
  But the patient may haply exclaim, “Don’t be rash,
  Lest your new-fangled physic should settle my hash!”

* * * * *

“TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE STAR!”—­Professor JOHN TYNDALL wrote to T.W.  RUSSELL last week commencing:—­“Here, in the Alps, at the height of more than 7,000 feet above the sea, have I read your letter to the Times on ‘the War in Tipperary.’” Prodigious! “7,000 feet” up in the air.  “How’s that for high?” as the Americans say.  How misty his views must be in this cloudland—­and that the Professor’s writing should be above the heads of the people, goes without saying.

* * * * *

[Illustration]

FEMALE ATHLETICISM.—­If Ladies go in for “the gloves,” not as formerly by the coward’s blow on the lips of a sleeping victim—­often uncommonly wide-awake—­the noble art of self-defence can be taught under the head of “Millin-ery.”

* * * * *

“CHANGE OF AIR—­WANTED,” by a party much broken up, a new tune to replace the “Boulanger March!” If the new tune cannot be found, we can at least suggest a change of title for the old one.  So, instead of “En revenant de la Revue,” let it be “En revant a la Revue.”  It should commence brilliantly, then intermediate variations, in which sharps and flats would play a considerable part, and, finally, after a chromatic scale, down not up, of accidentals, it should finish in the minor rallentando diminuendo, and end like the comic overture (whose we forget—­HAYDN’S?), where all the performers sneak off, and the conductor is left alone in his glory.

* * * * *

The British Fire Brigade representatives took with them a dog, to be presented to President CARNOT.  Why only one dog?  Two fire-dogs are to be found on the hearth of every old French Chateau.  Why only half do it?

* * * * *

[Illustration:  ADDING INSULT TO INJURY.

Brown (whose prize St. Bernard has just snatched a fillet of Veal from a Butcher’s slab).  “HI!  COME AND TAKE YOUR CONFOUNDED MEAT AWAY FROM HIM! HE’S EATING THE SKEWERS!”]

* * * * *

“DEATH AND HIS BROTHER SLEEP.”

QUEEN MAB.