Is he well or ill or middling? 
  Is he fighting, is he fiddling?—­
  He can’t only be thumb-twiddling.

  These are merely dim surmises,
  But experience advises
  Us to look for weird surprises,
  Somersaults, and strange disguises.

* * * * *

  Thus we summed the situation
  When Sir HEDWORTH MEUX’ oration
  Brought about a transformation.

  Lo! the Blenheim Boanerges
  On a sudden re-emerges
  And, to calm the naval gurges,
  FISHER’S restoration urges.

* * * * *

A Work of Supererogation.

    “At an interval in the evening some carols were sung by members of our
    G.F.S., and a collection was taken on behalf of a fund for providing
    Huns for our soldiers.”—­Parish Magazine.

* * * * *

INFORMATION WANTED.

No one can answer the question, and I have not the pluck—­being a law-abiding citizen—­to try for myself.  But I do so want to know.  I ask everyone.  I ask my partners at dinner (when any dinner comes my way).  I ask casual acquaintances.  I would ask the officials themselves, only they are so preoccupied.  But the words certainly set up a very engrossing problem, and upon this problem many minor problems depend, clustering round it like chickens round the maternal hen.  But I should be quite content with an answer only to the hen; the rest could wait.  Yet there is an inter-dependence between them that cannot be overlooked.  For example, did someone once do it and meet with such a calamity that everyone else had to be warned?  Or is it merely that the authorities dislike us to be comfy?  Or is it thought that the public might get so much attracted by the habit as to convert the place into a house where a dance is in progress?  I wish I knew these things.

Will not some Member ask for information in the House, and then—­arising out of this question—­get all the other subsidiary facts?  We are told so many things that don’t matter, such as the enormous number of Ministers in the new Government, which was formed, if I remember rightly, as a protest against too large a Cabinet; such as the colossal genius of each and every performer in Mr. COCHRANE’S theatrical companies; such as the best place in Oxford Street to contract the shopping habit; such as the breaks made day by day all through the War by billiard champions; such as the departure of Mr. G.B.  SHAW on his bewildering and, one would think, totally unnecessary visit to the Front and his return from that experience; such as—­but enough.  I am told by the informative Press all these and more things, but no one tells me the one thing I want to know.

Perhaps YOU can.

I want to know why we may not sit on the Tube moving staircases, and I want to know what would happen if we did.

* * * * *