What boots it thus to question? for thou Art,
    And still shalt be; but never canst be still,
  Destined at midnight thus to play thy part,
    And when all else is silent to be shrill. 
  Yea, as I lie all sleepless in the dark,
  I love not those who housed thee in the Ark.

* * * * *

“As good as A better.”

Dr. Andrew Wilson (in “Science Jottings,” in the Illustrated London News) dares disparage Golf “as an ideal game for young men,” venturing to advocate the preferential claims of fogeyish Cricket, and even of futile Lawn Tennis—­

  “O Scots, wha hae wi’ Balfour teed.”

What wull ye say to this disloyal, slanderous, sacrilegious Andy?  He hints that Golf is a mere modish fashion—­even a fin de siecle fad!!!  How many perfervid and patriotic Scots will

  “Condemn his soul to eternal perdition
  For his theory of the—­National Game?”

He says “you hit a ball and walk after it, and manoeuvre it into a hole.”  Eugh!  Such icy analysis would make Billiards a bore, and resolve “Knuckle-down” into nonsense!  “It is not (Golf is not!) a proceeding (proceeding, quotha!) of which youths and young men should grow enamoured.”  As though, forsooth, Golf were a sort of elderly Siren luring limp and languorous youths into illegitimate courses; a passee Delilah, whose enervating fascinations sapped the virile vigour that might be dedicated to “that noblest of sports,” Cricket, or even that “much better game,” Lawn Tennis!!!

Surely the devotees of the Golf-cultus, the lovers of the Links, will be down like a “driver” upon Dr. Wilson.  Oh, Andy, Andy, between you and your “brither Scots” there is henceforth “a great Golf fixed”!

* * * * *

A cricket paradox.

  Though true without questioning, yet all the same,
    It’s a trifle perplexing to know what it means
  That the counties that hate most to lose in a game
    Would be pleased very much at your giving them Beans

* * * * *

Wigs on the (sea) Green!—­Some Frenchman (we are told by The Gentlewoman) has done Ladies a good turn by inventing a Bathing Wig, which keeps the hair dry without making the fair bather look “a fright.”  Hooray!  Sabrina herself might shout for such an invention, which even the Nereids need not despise.  Dizzy once sarcastically referred to certain “Bathing W(h)igs,” but they were of another sort.  Not even the most adventurous Tory could “steal the clothes” of our latter day “Bathing Wigs.”

* * * * *

[Illustration:  “Fine Salmon you’ve got there, Poulter!”—­“Sixty-five Pounds, my Lord!  Shall I send it home to your Lordship?”—­“Well—­er—­look here!  Just cut me half A Pound out of the middle there, and give it me in A piece of paper!”]