That fear was unfounded, I’m happy to say,
  And red is the dominant tone of to-day;
  So far from incurring a shortage of news
  While the place is made fit for our heroes to use,
  We cannot remember a rosier time;
  We have rarely enjoyed such an orgy of crime.

  There are scandals as nice for the reader to nose
  As any old garbage of carrion crows;
  Our mystery-mongers are full of resource;
  There’s a bigamy boom and a vogue of divorce;
  To the licence of flappers we freely allude,
  And we do what we can with the cult of the nude.

  No, the War isn’t missed; there’s a murrain of strikes
  Where a paper can take any side that it likes;
  We are done with denouncing the filth of the Bosch,
  But we still have our own dirty linen to wash;
  Though we trade with the brute as a man and a brother,
  Our Warriors still can abuse one another.

  And if spicier features incline to be slack
  There is always the Chief of the State to attack;
  We have standing instructions to cake him with mud
  And a couple of columns reserved for his blood. 
  Oh, yes, there is Peace, but our property thrives—­
  We are having, I tell you, the time of our lives.

  O.S.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  “WANTED.”

HOLLAND.  “SO YOU SAY YOU’D LIKE ME TO SURRENDER THE EX-KAISER?”

ENTENTE POLICEMAN.  “WELL, MA’AM, I DIDN’T GO SO FAR AS THAT.  I ONLY ASKED
YOU FOR HIM.”]

* * * * *

OUR BALLYBUN LOTTERY.

[A propos of Premium Bonds it has been recalled that in his evidence, given some years ago before a Select Committee, the then Under- Secretary for Ireland stated that in that distressful country “lotteries are very much used for religious purposes by people of all denominations,” and that “it would be flying in the face of public opinion, especially of the great religious bodies, to interfere with them.”]

Murphy has given up charity for ever.  He was perhaps fuller of this virtue than any other body in Ballybun, and his house was packed with things he had won at raffles.  When a brick tore a hole in the Orange drum our Presbyterian pastor at once got up a bazaar for repairs to the chapel, and Murphy won the finest silver tea-service this side of the Aran Islands.  Murphy knew no distinctions of race, creed or sex in the holy cause of charity.  When our Methodist minister, who is universally popular, as his knowledge of a horse would be a credit to any denomination, got up an Auction Bridge Drive in aid of the Anti-Gambling League, Murphy came home with three pink antimacassars, a discourse by JEREMY TAYLOR and two months’ pay out of the pocket of McDougal, the organist, who seems to play cards by ear.  But Nemesis was lying in ambush for Murphy.