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[Illustration:  LEGAL IMPROVEMENTS.

THE CHANCERY JUDGES WILL BE EXPECTED TO TAKE THE INFANT SUITORS OUT
FOR AN AIRING IN THE PARK.  N.B.—­AFTER 4 P.M.]

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A QUERY BY “PEN.”—­There was a “Pickwick Exam.” invented by CALVERLEY the Inimitable.  Why not a “Pendennis” or “Vanity Fair” Exam.? A propos, I would just ask one question of the Thackerayan student, and it is this:—­There was one Becky whom everybody knows, but there was another BECKY as good, as kind, as sympathetic, and as simple, as the first Becky was bad, cruel, selfish, and cunning.  Where is BECKY the Second to be found in W.M.  THACKERAY’s Works?

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HER NOTE AND QUERY.—­Mrs. R. was listening to a ghost-story.  “After all,” observed her nephew, “the question is, is it true?  True, or not true ‘there’s the rub!’” “Ah! ‘there’s the rub!’” repeated our old friend, meditatively.  “I wonder if that expression is the origin of the proverb, ‘Truth is stranger than Friction?’”

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LOCAL COLOUR.—­“I should like to give all my creditors a dinner,” quoth the jovial and hospitable OWEN ORLROUND.  “Where shall I have it?” “Well,” replied his old friend JOE KOSUS, “have it at Duns Table.”

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CITY MEN.—­“Hope springs eternal,” and the motto for a probable Lord Mayor in the not very dim and distant future must be “Knill desperandum.”

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DOGS AND CATS—­(CORRESPONDENCE.)—­Sir,—­A recent letter to the Spectator mentions the case of a man who “barked like a dog in his sleep.”  The writer would like to know if anyone has ever had a similar experience.  Well, Sir, I knew a whole family of BARKERS, but I never heard them bark.  I knew three CATTS, sisters, who kept a shop, and came from Cheshire; yet they were very serious persons, and never grinned.  Since this experience I have doubted the simile of the Cheshire specimen of the feline race being founded on fact.—­Yours, &c.,

CATO.

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[Illustration:  THE WESTMINSTER WAXWORK SHOW FOR THE SESSION 1892.]

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[Illustration:  THE PLEASURES OF SHOOTING.

AFTER LUNCHEON THE “BEATING” IS A LITTLE WILD.]

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WEATHER REFORM.

SIR,—­Acquiescence in the state of the weather is no longer comme il faut.  Bombarding the Empyrean is as little regarded as throwing stones at monkeys, that they may make reprisals with cocoa-nuts; yet the success of the rain-makers is very doubtful.  Their premisses even are disallowed by many considerable authorities.  The little experiment which I propose to submit to the meteorological officials is founded