* * *

An official of the New York Y.W.C.A. inquires whether a woman of thirty years is young.  A more fair question would be, “When is a woman thirty years of age?”

* * *

President C.W.  Eliot, of Harvard University, says Britishers drink tea because it feeds the brain.  Our own opinion is that we drink it because we have tasted our coffee.

* * *

So many servant-girls are being enticed from one house to another that several houses now display the notice, “Visitors are requested to refrain from stealing the servants.”

* * *

Under a new Order public-houses will not open until seven in the evening on Sundays.  This seems to be another attempt to discourage early rising on that day.

* * *

Two men have been arrested at Oignies, Pas de Calais, for selling stones as coal.  We fancy we know the coal-dealer from whom they got this wrinkle.

* * *

Speaking at Sheffield University last week, Sir Eric Geddes said he hoped to see the day when there would be a degree of Transport.  What we’re getting now, we gather, can’t really be called Transport at all.

* * *

A live mussel measuring six inches has been found inside a codfish at Newcastle.  We expect that if the truth was known the mussel snapped at the cod-fish and annoyed it.

* * *

A soldier arrested at Dover told the police he was Sydney Carton, the hero of The Tale of Two Cities.  He is supposed to be an impostor.

* * *

A market-gardener in Surrey is said to be the double of Mr. Winston Churchill.  Since this announcement it is stated that the poor fellow has been inundated with messages of sympathy.

* * *

“The secret of success,” says Mr. W. Harris, “is hard work.”  Still, some people would scorn to take advantage of another man’s secret.

* * *

Wives, said the Judge of the Clerkenwell County Court recently, are not so ignorant that they do not know what their husband’s earnings are.  There is no doubt, however, that many workmen’s wives simply pocket the handful of bank-notes their husbands fling them on Saturday night without stopping to count them.

* * *

There were no buyers, it is stated, for fifty thousand blankets offered by the Disposals Board last week.  We have all along maintained that, though it would take time, the Board would wear its adversaries down.

* * *

According to an official list recently published the Government employs over three thousand charwomen.  The number is said to be so great that they have to take it in turns to empty Mr. Austen chamberlain’s portfolio.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Showman. “Don’t get him too tame, professor.  He’s got to go five rounds with the boxing kangaroo when you’ve finished.”]