[Illustration:  MODEST AMBITION.

The Squire (to his Eldest Son, just home from the ’Varsity).  “WELL, MY BOY, AND WHAT HAVE YOU SETTLED TO BE?”

The Squire’s Son.  “JUST A PLAIN COUNTRY GENTLEMAN LIKE YOU, FATHER!”]

* * * * *

THEOSOPHIC TOOLS.

(BY AN OPPONENT OF OCCULTISM.)

  The Theosophic Boom, its wordy strife
    And futile fuss are fading out in “fizzle.” 
  They talk a deal about their “planes of life,”
    ’Tis plain to me the fitter term were “chisel.”

* * * * *

POPULAR SONGS RE-SUNG: 

OR, MISS BOWDLER AT THE MUSIC HALLS.

“A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse,” says the old saw, and a wink is no doubt as good as a smile to a purblind ass.  But the wink is indeed one of the worst uses to which the human eye can he put.  It signifies usually the vulgarisation of humour, and the degradation of mirth.  It is the favourite eye-language of the cynical cad, the coarse jester, the crapulous clown, and—­above all—­the chuckling cheat.

[Illustration]

It must be admitted, that the Muse of the Music Hall—­in her Momus mood—­has a strong leaning towards the glorification of cynical ’cuteness of the Autolycus sort.  It is a weakness which she seems to share with party scribes and Colonial politicians.  If she had any classic leanings, which she has not, her favourite deity would be Mercury, the “winking Cyllenian Argophont” of the Homeric Hymn, the “little cradled rogue,” the Apollo-cheating babe, “the lord of those who swindle, house-break, sheep-steal and shop-lift,” under whom Autolycus prided himself upon having been “littered.” Autolycus’s complacent self-gratulation, “How bless’d are we that are not simple men!” would appeal to the heart of the Music-hall votary.  “Ha, ha! what a fool Honesty is! and Trust his sworn brother, a very simple gentleman” is, virtually, the burthen of dozens of the most favourite of the Music-hall ditties.

Sly-scheming Hermes “winked” knowingly at Jupiter when he was “pitching his yarn” about the stolen oxen, and Jupiter “according to his wont,”

  “Laughed heartily to hear the subtle witted
  Infant give such a plausible account,
  And every word a lie.”

So the Music-hall Muse “winks” knowingly, and knavishly, at her audience, and her audience “laugh heartily,” in Jovian guffaws, at her winks.  What wonder then that she should lyrically apostrophise “The Wink” in laudatory numbers?

  “Say, boys, now is it quite the thing?”

she cries in sham deprecation, but all the while she “winks the other eye” in a way her hearers quite understand.  “Cabby knows his fare,” and the Music-hall Muse knows her clients.  What, we wonder, would be her reception did she really carry out her ironically pretended protest and sing to the chuckling cads who applaud her, the following version of her favourite lay?