“SUR LE TAPIS.”—­It was a carpet that ostensibly parted an eminent firm of composer, author, and theatrical manager.  W.S.G. didn’t want D’OYLY CARPET—­no, beg pardon, should have written D’OYLY CARTE to have carte blanche. [Pretty name this.  Is there a BLANCHE CARTE?  If not, “make it so."]—­to do whatever he liked whenever he liked with the decorating and upholstering of the theatre.  And recently another carpet, not in connection with the above firm, created a difficulty.  What’s a thousand-guinea carpet to a man who likes this sort of thing?  Nothing.  Yet as amici curiae, we would have thought that that Tottenham Road carpet might have been kept out of Court.  Wasn’t that a Blunder, MAPLE?

[Illustration:  THE LOVE LETTER.—­A STUDY OF INDISCRETION.]

* * * * *

FROM NILE TO NEVA.

    ["And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve
    with rigour.  And they made their lives bitter with hard
    bondage.”—­Exodus.

    “The Russian Government, by the new edicts legalises
    persecution, and openly declares war against the Jews of the
    Empire.”—­Times.]

“BEWARE!” ’Tis a voice from the shades, from the dark of three thousand long years, But it falls like the red blade of RA, and should echo in Tyranny’s ears With the terror of overhead thunder; from Nile to the Neva it thrills, And it speaks of the judgment of wrong, of the doom of imperious wills.  When PENTAOUR sang of the PHARAOH, alone by Orontes, at bay, By the chariots compassed about of the foe who were fierce for the fray, He sang of the dauntless oppressor, of RAMESES, conquering king; But were there such voice by the Neva to-day, of what now should he sing?  Of tyranny born out of time, of oppression belated and vain?  Put up the old weapon, O despot, slack hand from the scourge and the chain; For the days of the PHARAOHS are done, and the laureates of tyranny mute, And the whistle of falchion and flail are not set to the chords of the lute.  True, the Hebrew, who bowed to the lash of the Pyramid-builders, bows still, For a time, to the knout of the TSAR, to the Muscovite’s merciless will; But four millions of Israel’s children are not to be crushed in the path Of a TSAR, like the Hittites of old, when great RAMESES flamed in his wrath Alone through their numberless hosts.  No, the days of the Titans of Wrong Are past, for the Truth is a torch, and the voice of the peoples is strong.  Even PENTAOUR, the poet of Might, spake in pity that rings down the years Of the life of “the peasant that tills” of his terrible toil and his tears; Of the rats and the locusts that ravaged, and, worse, the tax-gathering horde Who tithed all his pitiful tilth with the aid of the stick and the cord; And the splendour of RAMESES pales in the text of the old Coptic Muse, And—­one hears the mad rush of the wheels that the fierce Red Sea billow pursues!