From Monday next the price of The Wiggleswick Weekly (with which is incorporated The Bindleton Advertiser and The Swashborough Gazette) will be 17_s._ 6_d._ per copy.  If this—­the forty-seventh—­increase in price does not bring about the desired reduction in circulation we shall unhesitatingly advance the price to L1 9_s._ 5-3/4_d._ per copy.  The management of The Wiggleswick Weekly is determined, at no matter what sacrifice, to limit the circulation to forty copies weekly.

* * * * *

From an ecclesiastical magazine:—­

    “The Vicar of ——­ has promised to address our branch of the C.E.M.S.
    as soon as he can arrange a fine and moonlight evening.”

We should be greatly obliged if the reverend gentleman would let us have the prescription.  There should be money in it.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Doctor’s Wife.  “SO GLAD TO SEE YOU OUT AGAIN.  THE DOCTOR AND I HAD NO IDEA YOU’D BEEN SO ILL TILL WE CAME TO MAKE UP THE BOOKS.”]

* * * * *

SOME MORE BAD WORDS.

  In a recent verse adventure
    I compiled “a little list”
  Of the verbs deserving censure,
   Verbs that “never would be missed”;
  Now, to flatter the fastidious,
    Suffer me the work to crown
  With three epithets—­all hideous—­
    And one noisome noun.

  First, to add to the recital
    Of the words that gall and irk,
  Is the old offender “vital,”
    Done to death by overwork;
  Only a prolonged embargo
    On its use by Press and pen
  Can recall this kind of argot
    Back to life again.

  I, in days not very distant,
    Though the memory gives me pain,
  From the awful word “insistent”
    Did not utterly refrain;
  Once it promised to refresh us,
    Seemed to be alert enough;
  Now I loathe it, laboured, precious—­
    Merely verbal fluff.

  Thirdly, in the sheets that daily
    Cater for our vulgar needs,
  There’s a word that figures gaily
    In reviewers’ friendly screeds,
  Who declare a book’s “arresting,”
    Mostly, it must be confessed,
  Meaning just the problem-questing
    Which deserves arrest.

  Last and vilest of this bad band
    Is that noun of gruesome sound,
  “Uplift,” which the clan of Chadband
    Hold in reverence profound;
  Used for a dynamic function
    ’Tis a word devoid of guile,
  Only as connoting unction
    It excites my bile.

  Why, fastidious poetaster,
    Waste your energy and breath
  Like a petulant schoolmaster
    Only doing words to death? 
  Needlessly you slate and scourge us;
    War, that sifts and tries and tests,
  May be safely left to purge us
    Of these verbal pests.