[BOBBY thinks of it, with depression.

The G.G. (before figure of Aladdin’s Uncle selling new lamps for old).  Here you are, you see! “Ali Baba,” got ’em all here, you see.  Never read your “Arabian Nights,” either!  Is that the way they bring up boys nowadays!

Percy.  Well, the fact is, Grandfather, that unless a fellow reads that kind of thing when he’s young, he doesn’t get a chance afterwards.

The Aunt (still quoting).  “In the famous work,” BOBBY, “by which we know MASUDI, he mentions the Persian Hezar Afsane-um-um-um,—­nor have commentators failed to notice that the occasion of the book written for the Princess HOMAI resembles the story told in the Hebrew Bible about ESTHER, her mother or grandmother, by some Persian Jew two or three centuries B.C.”  Well, I never knew that before!...  This is “Sindbad and the Old Man of the Sea”—­let’s see what they say about him. (Reads.) “Both the story of Sindbad and the old Basque legend of Tartaro are undoubtedly borrowed from the Odyssey of HOMER, whose Iliad and Odyssey were translated into Syriac in the reign of HARUN-UR-RASHID.”  Dear, dear, how interesting, now! and, BOBBY, what do you think someone says about “Jack and the Beanstalk”?  He says—­“this tale is an allegory of the Teutonic Al-fader, the red hen representing the all-producing sun:  the moneybags, the fertilising rain; and the harp, the winds.”  Well, I’m sure it seems likely enough, doesn’t it?

    [BOBBY suppresses a yawn; PERCY’s feelings are outraged by
    receiving a tin trumpet from the Lucky Tub; general move to
    the scene of the Hampstead Tragedy.

BEFORE THE HAMPSTEAD TABLEAUX.

Spectators.  Dear, dear, there’s the dresser, you see, and the window, broken and all; it’s wonderful how they can do it!  And there’s poor Mrs.  ’OGG—­it’s real butter and a real loaf she’s cutting, and the poor baby, too!...  Here’s the actual casts taken after they were murdered.  Oh, and there’s Mrs. PEARCEY wheeling the perambulator—­it’s the very perambulator!  No, not the very one—­they’ve got that at the other place, and the piece of toffee the baby sucked.  Have they really!  Oh, we must try and go there, too, before the children’s holidays are over.  And this is all?  Well, well, everything very nice, I will say.  But a pity they couldn’t get the real perambulator!

* * * * *

BURNS VERSUS BURNS.

A SONG OF THE GREAT SCOTCH STRIKE.  TUNE—­“PUSH ABOUT THE JORUM!”

[Illustration]

  “Oh, let us not like snarling tykes,
    In wrangling be divided;
  Till slap comes in an uncoo loon
    And with a rung decide it. 
  Be Britain still to Britain true,
    Among oursels united;
  For never but by British hands
    Maun British wrongs be righted!”