“Do not listen to him!” shouted the Accused.  “And if he will not desist, shoot him too—­shoot us both.”

“You exceed your duties, Sirrah,” said the Commander-in-Chief, with some severity—­for discipline was strict in the Italian Army.  “It is for me to command, not you!” The Prisoner lowered his head at the just reproof, and then his superior officer continued, “Why do you ask us to desist?”

“Because the Prisoner is innocent.  He acted from the best of motives.  I was the proprietor of the shop he sacked, and I (for, after all, I am a patriot) demand his pardon!”

“You!” exclaimed the Commander-in-Chief.  “Surely you ought to be the last to urge such a plea.  We do not know what your shop contained, but presume that the contents was your property.”

“You are right in the presumption,” acquiesced the aged man; “but these documents will show that he was right, from a military point of view, to sack my shop.”

The Commander-in-Chief hastily glanced at the papers, and with a thrill of pleasure, ordered his favourite General to be released.

“This mystery must never be revealed,” he murmured.  And it never would, had not the hero-journalist printed the story.  Thus it was that the tale became international property.  Now it is known all the world over that the General sacked a shop to obtain the arms and accoutrements of the Italian Army.  But it is still (comparatively) a secret that the proprietor of the establishment carried on on the premises the business of a pawnbroker!

* * * * *

COMPULSORY GREEK;

OR, BYRON UP TO DATE.

(A BRITISH BOY’S VIEW ON A BURNING QUESTION.)

[Illustration]

  Compulsory Greek!  Compulsory Greek! 
    Though “burning SAPPHO loved and sung,”
  Why in Greek shackles should they seek
    To bind the British schoolboy’s tongue? 
  Eternal bores, that Attic set,
  But, heaven be thanked, we’ll “chuck” them yet.

  “The Scian and the Teian Muse”
    Ruled us as tyrants absolute;
  Now even pedagogues refuse
    To stodge us with such stale old fruit. 
  Why should the STANLEY-dowered West
  Make the Anabasis a test?

  They teach us about Marathon,
    But what is Marathon to me? 
  Tell me of fights still going on,
    Men “rightly struggling to be free;”
  Nay, I find interest much more brave in
  The mill ’twixt Thingummy and SLAVIN.

  Oh, feed me not on mythic lore,
    But Science and the modern Fact,
  Teach me Electric Fires to store,
    The difference ’twixt “Bill” and “Act.” 
  Why should a Cockney care a “cuss”
  For HOMER or for AESCHYLUS?

  For who are they?  But what art thou,
    My Country?  On thy fertile shore
  The heroic lyre is tuneless now;
    To scheme for dividends, dig for ore,
  These are the things we hold divine,
  Not HOMER’s long-resounding line.