Be good enough to send me, by return, at least L100.  It’s a very difficult and expensive thing to support the dignity of your paper in this town.  Whiskey is very dear, and a great deal goes a very short way.

Yours sincerely,

THE MAN AT THE OAR.

Henley-on-Thames, July 4.

* * * * *

A COMMON COMPLAINT.

(BY A DAILY VICTIM.)

[Illustration]

  O Editors, who earn your daily bread
    By giving us all kinds of information,
  There’s something that I fear ought to be said,
    Which may—­which will arouse your indignation;
  For you may not be happy when it’s more than hinted
  Your news is such that we can’t read it when it’s printed.

  Yet I would have you fully understand
    The real reason why I choose to quarrel
  With what you print—­your columns are not banned
    Because their contents are at all immoral
  Yet if there is a scandal, though a small amount of it,
  You sometimes soil your pages with a long account of it.

  Far other reasons urge me to reveal
    My feelings on this matter—­to assail your
  Too common practice, and say why I feel
    Your daily efforts are a daily failure;
  Your paper by its columns and its size confuses me,
  And worse—­there’s nothing in it in the least amuses me.

  Can you indeed in seriousness suppose—­
    To me, I tell you, naught could be absurder—­
  That anywhere at all there can be those
    Who read the noisome details of a murder,
  Or take delight in knowing that in such a county
  Some teeming, triple mother earns the Royal Bounty?

  Ibsenity!  Amid the maze of words
    I find it difficult to pick my way right;
  This critic at the Master only girds,
    That promptly hails him as the “premier playwright.” 
  Whilst I don’t mind confessing that I swear right roundly
  At mention of a subject that I hate profoundly.

  Then Parliament—­without the slightest doubt
    Of all dull things the dullest.  What could be more
  Distressing than to have to read about
    The coming (?) KEAY, whose other name is SEYMOUR? 
  And now that Patriots’ speeches flow with milk and honey,
  They’re very much less Irish, and of course less funny.

  The Bye-Elections are a little fun,
    I laugh to note the jubilant precision
  With which you tell me that a seat that’s won
    Exactly counts two votes on a division,
  Though this is all I care for, and am bored at knowing
  How pleased is Mr. GLADSTONE with the tide that’s flowing.

  Yet all these many, varied forms of pain
    Are trifling, small and hardly worth attention. 
  One thing is so much worse—­oh! pray again
    The “epidemic” never, never mention,
  And promptly tell your poet that the rhyme “cadenza”
  Must never more be worked in for the Influenza!