* * * * *

ADVICE GRATIS.—­DEAFNESS. (To “EXPERIMENTALIST.")—­Yours seems a peculiar form of this painful complaint.  We cannot understand why you should feel “as if wind were always coming from your left ear.”  Try blowing into the ear with the bellows three times a day.  It may drive the wind back.  For the “fulness, throbbing, &c.,” we should advise ramming a good-sized darning-needle as far as it will go into the orifice.  After that—­or even before—­it might be best to consult a competent medical man.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  EARLY MISGIVINGS.

Newly-Married M.P. “BY JOVE, TEN O’CLOCK!  I MUST GO DOWN TO THE HOUSE, IF ONLY TO FIND SOMEONE TO PAIR WITH.”

His Wife. “OH, DARLING, I THOUGHT YOU AND I HAD PAIRED FOR LIFE!”]

* * * * *

“WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK;”

OR, MANOEUVRING FOR A HOLD.

  Ye who have read in HOMER’s mighty song
  How sage ULYSSES, AJAX towering strong,
  Met at the funeral games on Trojan sands,
  With knotted limbs and grip of sinewy hands,
  To wrestle for the prize, attend, draw near,
  And a new tale of coming tussle hear!

  When great ACHILLES called them to the lists,
  Those men of massive thews and ponderous fists,
  “Scarce did the chief the vigorous strife propose,
  When tower-like AJAX and ULYSSES rose. 
  Amid the ring each nervous rival stands
  Embracing rigid with implicit hands.” 
  Now Greek meets Greek again, but wrestling now
  Is not as on old Ilion’s shore, I trow;
  Not now the olive crown, the long-wool’d sheep,
  Is prize; ’tis Power they strive to win and keep. 
  By diverse dodges and by novel “chips,”
  Subtler “approaches,” and more artful “grips,”
  The rival champions strive to lock and fell,
  Gallia’s devices, found to answer well
  In wary onset and in finish slow,
  Old Attic swiftness, seen in hold and throw. 
  Supplement or supplant.  When AJAX stood
  Before ULYSSES, neither seemed in mood
  For long manoeuvring.  To the clutch they came
  With sinews of snap-steel and souls of flame. 
  “Close lock’d above, their heads and arm are mix’d;
  Below their planted feet at distance fix’d: 
  Like two strong rafters, which the builder forms
  Proof to the wintry winds and howling storms;
  Their tops connected, but at wider space
  Fix’d on the centre stands their solid base.” 
  So in old days.  Now wrestlers shift like snakes,
  And dodge a la DUBOIS, for mightier stakes
  Than olive, parsley, or the champion’s belt
  Can furnish forth. 
                     Long time hath it been felt
  That two superior champions, age-long foes,
  At last must come to a conclusive close. 
  “Defiled with honourable dust they roll,
  Still breathing strife, and unsubdued