* * * * *

THE ARRESTING POWER OF BEAUTY.

    “You dreamed of someone with whiskers who made your heart stop beating
    in your tiny waist every time he looked at you.”—­Home Notes.

* * * * *

    “General, good plain cook; L45; flat, Maida Vale; constant hot water.”
    —­Times.

But why tell the poor woman beforehand?

* * * * *

    “It recalls the distressing aphorism: 

  ’Life is real, life is earnest,
  And things are not what they seem.’”

Liverpool Post and Mercury.

For example, this may seem like a quotation from the “Psalm of Life,” but it isn’t.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  A TEST OF SAGACITY.

MR. LLOYD GEORGE.  “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WITH THE LETTERS I HAVE PLACED BEFORE HIM OUR LEARNED FRIEND WILL NOW SPELL OUT SOMETHING THAT SIGNIFIES THE GREATEST HAPPINESS FOR IRELAND.”

THE PIG. “I CAN’T MAKE THE BEASTLY THING SPELL ‘REPUBLIC.’”]

* * * * *

ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

Tuesday, February 10th.—­As HIS MAJESTY read his gracious speech to the assembled Lords and Commons did his thoughts flow back for a moment to the last time he opened Parliament in person?  It was on another February 10th, in 1914, and so little was the coming storm foreseen that the customary announcement, “My relations with Foreign Powers continue to be friendly,” was followed by a special reference to the satisfactory progress of “my negotiations with the German Government and the Ottoman Government” regarding—­Mesopotamia, of all places.

[Illustration:  I AM AFRAID I AM GETTING CONTROVERSIAL.”—­Mr. Lloyd George.]

Since then everything has changed—­save one.  Ireland remains the skeleton at the feast.  The condition of that unhappy country still causes HIS MAJESTY “grave concern,” to be removed, let us piously hope, by the promised Home Rule Bill.  It is true that, as Lord DUFFERIN said when moving the Address in the Lords, no one in Ireland appears to want the Bill; but then, as Colonel SIDNEY PEEL, the Mover in the Commons, remarked with equal truth, the ordinary rules of thought do not apply to the Irish Question.

The PRIME MINISTER has lately been advised by a candid friend to take a six months’ holiday “to recover his resilience.”  Mr. ADAMSON and Sir DONALD MACLEAN found him nowise lacking in that quality when he came to reply to their criticisms of the King’s Speech.  The Labour leader, convinced by a fortnight in Ireland that the present Administration was all wrong, and that the Government’s Bill would do nothing to improve it, was bluntly asked, “Are we to withdraw the troops and leave the assassins in charge?” while the “Wee Free” champion, who had interpreted the recent by-elections