Col.  X. I have not forgotten it, SMITH, and as a politician the idea is comforting.  Ah, SMITH, would that I had always done my duty in the House of Commons!  But no, with a view to obtaining this command, I voted against my convictions!  I supported the Government in their proposal to tax perambulators!  It was cruel, unmanly so to do, but I was weak and foolish!  And now I cannot die easily!  Would that I could live to repair the past.

Opposition Whip (suddenly springing up from behind a limber a la HAWKSHAW the Detective).  It is not too late!  Return with me to Westminster forthwith.  The Third Reading is down for to-night!  With a special train we shall be in time!  You can yet record your vote!

Col.  X. (suddenly reviving).  Say you so?  Then I will recover!  I will do my duty!

    [Exit, to vote against his Party, and to be put permanently
    on the shelf, from a military point of view!

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

SIR EDWIN ARNOLD’s paper on Japan, in Scribner, for March, is interesting and also amusing.  The Japanese seemed to be a charming people; and the Japanese women delightful as wives; but then they can be divorced for being talkative.

A propos of Japan, to judge from one of our LIKA JOKO’s capital illustrations of Hospital Nursing in The English Illustrated Magazine, the Matron’s room must be “an illigant place, intoirely”; while as for amusement, if the picture of a nurse giving a patient a cup of ink by mistake for liquorice-water isn’t a real good practical side-splitter, the Baron would like to be informed what is?  Then we come upon a delightful little picture of “The Pet of the Hospital”; and so she ought to be, for a prettier pet than this nursing Sister it would be difficult to find.  What becomes of her?  Does she marry a “Sawbones,” or run off with a patient?  Anyhow, she must be a “great attraction,” and if anything were to happen to the Baron, and he couldn’t be removed to his own palatial residence, he would say, “Put me in a cab, drive me to the Furniss Hospital, and let me be in Pretty Pet’s Ward.”

The Baron has just been dipping into Mr. JUSTIN HUNTLY McCARTHY’s “Pages on Plays” in The Gentleman’s Magazine.  JUSTIN HUNTLY expresses his opinion that “The Dancing Girl will almost certainly be the play of the season; it will probably be the principal play of the year.”  “Almost certainly” and “probably” save the situation.  The Baron backs The Idler against The Dancing Girl for a run.  In the same Magazine Mr. ALBERT FLEMING has condensed into a short story, called Sally, material that would have served some authors for a three-volume novel.