They bolt me to the billiard-room,
    Where chaps are playing five-bob snooker;
  They see me dodging from the doom,
    They heed no threats and no rebuker;
  “We’ve got thee now,” they say, “ba goom!”
    And pelt me with their lucre.

  Vainly I put the prices up
    To stem that flowing tide of riches;
  The horror haunts me as I sup;
    The unknown guest arrives and pitches
  His ultimatum in my cup:—­
    “The people must have breeches.”

  I shall not see the skylark soar
    Nor hear the cuckoo nor the linnet,
  When Springtime comes, above the roar
    Of folk a-hollering each minute
  For yarn at thirty-two times more
    Than what I spent to spin it.

  Eh me, I cannot help but pine
    For days departed now and olden,
  When I could drink of common wine,
    To powdered flunkeys unbeholden;
  Do peas taste better when we dine
    Because the knife is golden?

  Often I wish I might repair
    To haunts that once I used to enter,
  Like “The Old Fleece” up yonder there,
    Of which I was a great frequenter,
  Not yet a brass-bound millionaire,
    But just a cent-per-center.

  EVOE.

* * * * *

    “Over 30,000 people paid L2,019 to see the cup tie at Valley Parade.”—­
    Provincial Paper.

The new rich!

* * * * *

[Illustration:  MANNERS AND MODES.

HERO-WORSHIP:  DISTRACTIONS OF THE FILM WORLD.]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Female (to ignorant party). “‘E’S DRESSED AS ONE O’ THEM BRONCHIAL BUSTERS TO ATTRACT ATTENTION TO ’IS CORF CURE.”]

* * * * *

THE JUMBLE SALE.

Aunt Angela coughed.  “By the way, Etta was here this afternoon.”

Edward’s eye met mine.  The result of Etta’s last call was that Edward spent a vivid afternoon got up as Father Christmas in a red dressing-gown and cotton-wool whiskers, which caught fire and singed his home-grown articles, small boys at the same time pinching his legs to see if he was real, while I put in some sultry hours under a hearthrug playing the benevolent polar-bear to a crowd of small girls who hunted me with fire-irons.

“What is it this time?” I asked.

“A jumble sale,” said Aunt Angela.

“What’s that?”

“A scheme by which the bucolic English exchange garbage,” Edward explained.

“Oh, well, that has nothing to do with us, thank goodness.”

He returned to his book, a romance entitled Gertie, or Should She Have Done It? Edward, I should explain, is a philosopher by trade, but he beguiles his hours of ease with works of fiction borrowed from the cook.

Aunt Angela was of a different opinion.  “Oh, yes, it has:  both of you are gradually filling the house up with accumulated rubbish.  If you don’t surrender most of it for Etta’s sale there’ll be a raid.”