[Illustration:  A MEETING OF THE “BANDY” ASSOCIATION

FOR THE PROMOTION OF “HOCKEY ON THE ICE.”]

* * * * *

RICE AND PRUNES.

[Illustration]

  Rice and prunes a household journal
    Called the chief of household boons: 
  Hence my mother cooks diurnal
    Rice and prunes.

  Therefore on successive noons,
    Sombre fruit and snowy kernel
  Woo reluctant forks and spoons.

  As the ear, when leaves are vernal,
    Wearies of the blackbird’s tunes,
  So we weary of eternal
    Rice and prunes.

* * * * *

AN OLD FRIEND AT THE CRITERION.—­Time flies, and Fourteen Days, occupying only a couple of hours or so at the Criterion, goes wonderfully.  CHARLES WYNDHAM is the life and soul of the piece, and the giddy GIDDENS is another life and soul.  Miss MARY MOORE, charming as ever, with a clearness of “dictation,” as Mrs. MALAPROP would say, that is in itself a delight to the ear.  Every word she speaks is distinct, and, which is more to the purpose, every telling word tells. Fourteen Days is a survival and revival of one of H.J.  BYRON’s fittest.  If it “catches on” once more, as it ought to do, it might run fourteen weeks, and then,—­“Next please!”

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Q.E.D.

“MAY I ASK YOU HOW YOU MANAGE TO KEEP YOUR LITTLE PET SO SLEEK AND THIN?”

“I DON’T KNOW.  IT HAS ITS LUNCH AND DINNER WITH ME EVERY DAY.”

“WELL, SO DOES MINE!”]

* * * * *

ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF TOBY, M.P.

House of Commons, Monday, February 15.—­A lively sitting, with an unexpected ending.  Debate on Address resumed by SEXTON in excellent speech, an effect largely contributed to by comparative brevity.  Only an hour long; remarkable compression.  Would have been better still had it been reduced by the twenty minutes occupied in preliminary observations.  At twenty-five minutes past four he rose to move Amendment condemnatory of Land Purchase Act of last year.  Precisely at a quarter to five came to his amendment, and began to recommend it to House.  But mustn’t complain.  An excellent beginning for new Session that may further develop.

“An oratorical eel,” SAUNDERSON, later in sitting, likened Member for West Belfast to; charming simile, with just that mixture of graphicness and incongruity that only Irish wit could flash upon.  Not meant to be uncomplimentary, for SAUNDERSON, like the rest, acknowledges capacity of SEXTON in debate; his clear insight, his capacity for grasping a subject, his aptness of illustration, his quickness of retort, and, alack! the embarrassment of the wealth of language.  If he could only economise that, and guard against the fatal fluency that besets him, converting what might be a sharp direct speech of twenty minutes into a windy weariness of hour-and-a-half or two hours, he would take high rank among Parliamentary debaters.