I am the most modest of the prophets, but even I venture to foretell that there will be an annular eclipse of the sun in the coming year on the 8th of April, that it will begin at twenty-two minutes to 8 A.M. at Liverpool, and that it will be visible at Greenwich.  What clairvoyant could go further?  Test my mantic gifts at any other point and I doubt not I can satisfy you.  Do you want to know at what time there will be high water at Aberdeen on the afternoon of the 21th January?  The answer is:  “Thirteen minutes past one.”  Do you want to know when partridge shooting will begin?  I do not even need to reflect before giving the answer:  “The 1st of September.”  And so I could go on, almost ad infinitum, filling in the details of the year in advance.  On the 1st of March, for instance, being St David’s Day, there will be a banquet at which Mr Lloyd George will make a reference to hills, mists, God, and a country called Wales.  On the 28th of March, being Easter Monday, there will be a Bank Holiday.  On the 24th of May, being Empire Day, the majority of shops in Regent Street will hang out Union Jacks, and school children will salute the flag at Abinger Hammer, Communists in various parts of London gnashing their teeth the while.  On the 15th of June the anniversary of Magna Charta will fall and will pass without any disturbance.  On the 12th of July Orangemen will dress im in sashes and listen to orators whose speeches will prove the hollowness of the old adage that you cannot serve both God and Mammon.  On the same day, Lord Birkenhead will celebrate his forty-ninth birthday, showing that Gallopers are born not made.  Need I continue, however?  The year is obviously going to be a crowded one.  It will, as I have said, contain 365 days and will come to an end at 12 P.M. on St Silvester’s Day at the time of the new moon.

I have said enough, I think, to prove that one knows a great deal more about the future than is generally realised.  There may be sceptics who doubt the virtue of my prophecies.  If there be such, all I ask is that they should mark them well and verify each of them as its fulfilment falls due.  The expense will be small.  The most serious item will be the journey to Aberdeen to see the tide coming in on the 24th of January; but, by taking up a collection in Aberdeen, it should be possible to reduce one’s net outlay by the better part of a shilling.  On the whole, there never were prophecies easier to verify.  I confidently challenge comparison between them and any prophecy made by any Cabinet Minister during the last five years.  I even challenge comparison with the much more respectable prophecies contained in Raphael’s Prophetic Messenger.  Raphael at times strains our credulity.  When he tells us, for instance, that on the 27th of April it is going to be “cold and frosty” and that on the 29th of April we shall see “high winds, storms and thunder,” we feel that he is giving a free rein to his imagination and treating