“I am John Smith,” I said.

“I am afraid I still—­”

“Allow me to tell you all about myself,” I said.  And I did.

I was a little nervous as to how he would take it, but the event justified me.  When I opened my paper next evening I found the following words:—­

“Ran across John Smith of Ravenscourt Park yesterday afternoon.  Chatting with him about one thing and another, he told me something of the methods he has employed to bring about his present celebrity in that salubrious suburb.  He has never, it appears, written a book, collaborated in a review, appeared in a night-club, lunched at the Bitz, sat on a committee, or been summoned as a witness in a sensational divorce case.  His record, I fancy, must be one of the most thoroughly unique in Greater London.”

There was no photograph of John Smith, but, biting partly into this paragraph and partly into another on the opposite side of the column, was one of Mortimer Despenser, the new film star, featured in Scented Sin, which really did almost as well.  Dear old Du Beurre!

EVOE.

* * * * *

MUSIC A LA MODE.

  There was a young singer whose moans
  Struck a chill to her auditors’ bones;
      So she had to explain
      That she wasn’t in pain,
  But was trying to sing quarter-tones.

  There once was a basso, a swain
  Who came from the rolling Ukraine;
      He could sing double D
      From breakfast till tea
  Without any symptom of strain.

  There was a benevolent peer
  Who wished to make Art less severe,
      So he learned the Jazz drum
      And bids fair to become
  The black man’s most terrible fear.

  There once was a critic whose bane
  Was his dread of a style that was plain,
      So, resolved to refresh us,
      He strove to be precious,
  But sank to the nether inane.

* * * * *

    “AMATEUR SNOOKER POOL CHAMPIONSHIP:  S.H.  FRY DEFLATED.”—­Provincial
    Paper.

It was noticed even during the Billiard competition that he never really got the wind up.

* * * * *

    “The chief obstacle to the development of water-power is usually the
    question of finance, and if the scheme will not hold water from that
    point of view it is not likely to float.”—­Electrical Review.

And if it holds too much water it is certain to sink.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  MORE ADVENTURES OF A POST-WAR SPORTSMAN.

Irishman (discussing “roarer” recently purchased by P.-W.S.).  “VERY WELL KNOWN, SHE WAS, WID THE WARD UNION STAG HOUNDS.  THE BOYS USED TO CALL HER ‘THE WIDDA,’ FOR WHY THEY SAID YE COULD ALWAYS HEAR HER SOBBIN’ AFTHER THE DEER DEPARTED.”]