And so through all these changing years
    With all their thousand changing faces,
  Their failures, hopes, successes, fears,
    In half a hundred different places,
  JACK still has been the same to me,
    As bright within my memory’s fair book
  As when we met in ’43,
    And smiled about that fallen prayer-book.

  Ah well, the moments swiftly stream
    Unheeded through the upturned hour-glass;
  I’ve lived my life, and dreamed my dream,
    And quaffed the sweet, as now the sour glass. 
  But old and spent my mind strays back
    To pleasant paths fresh-strewn with roses,
  And I would see my old friend JACK
    Once more before the curtain closes.

* * * * *

ANNOUNCEMENT.—­The Earl of LATHOM (who, being quite six feet or more, cannot be described as Small and Earl-y) is to lay the foundation-stone of “The Cross Deaf and Dumb School for N. and E. Lancashire.”  Now the Deaf and Dumb are, as a rule, exceptionally cheerful and good-tempered.  It is quite right, therefore, that exceptions to this rule should be treated in a separate establishment, and that the “Cross Deaf and Dumb” ones should have a house to themselves. Prosit!

* * * * *

A HIGHLY-POLISH’D PERFORMANCE.—­HENRY IRVING as Le Juif Polonais in The Bells.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  TUNING THE HARP.]

* * * * *

A FRIEND TAKES ME FOR A QUIET DRIVE.

[Illustration:  1.  “Don’t be alarmed, Jack—­it’s only her way.  She always does this at starting.  Never knew her to come over.”]

[Illustration:  2.  “May as well get out.  She always makes me walk up here.”]

[Illustration:  3.  “Look sharp, Jack, and get the reins from under her tail or we’ll have an accident!”]

[Illustration:  4.  “Curious thing how she hates trains!”]

[Illustration:  5.  “Better be on the look-out for a soft spot, old chap!”]

[Illustration:  6.  “Now this is the second time she has turned me out just here!”]

* * * * *

IN THE MONKEY-HOUSE;

OR, CAGE VERSUS CLUB.

  PROFESSOR GARNER goes to the Gaboon
  To garner Monkey talk; a dubious boon! 
  Stucco Philistia shows in many shapes
  The babble of baboons, the chat of apes. 
  Why hang, Sir, up a tree, in a big cage,
  To study Simian speech, which in our age
  May be o’erheard on Platform or in Pub,
  And studied ’mid the comforts of a Club? 
  And yet perchance your forest apes would shrink
  From Smoke-room chat of apes who never think,
  But cackle imitatively all round,
  Till their speech hath an automatic sound. 
  Put the dread name of GL-DST-NE in the slot
  SMELFUNGUS calls his mouth, and rabid