He told me how he rose at dawn
    To titivate the land
  (’Twas here that I began to yawn
    Behind a courteous hand),
  And how he thought his favourite pea
    Had found the soil too dry
  (And here I feared my yawns would be
    Apparent to his eye).

  On fruit and blossom good and bad
    He rambled on unchecked,
  Until his conversation had
    Such curative effect
  That in the end it drove away
    My weak despondent mood. 
  I clasped his hand and blessed the day
    He came to do me good.

* * * * *

    “MORE DEARER PUBLICATIONS.”—­Daily Mail.

More dearer nor what they was?  Dear, dear!

* * * * *

From Young India, the organ of Mr. GANDHI:—­

    “In our last issue the number of those in receipt of relief is given at
    500.  This is a printer’s devil.  The number is 5,000.”

Mr. GANDHI ought to exorcise that devil.

* * * * *

    “The tests were entirely satisfactory, and the pilot manoeuvred for a
    quarter of an hour at a height of 500 metres and a speed of 150
    millimetres an hour.”—­Aeronautics.

This is believed to be the nearest approach to “hovering” that has yet been achieved by a machine.

* * * * *

NITRATES.

  All alone I went a-walking by the London Docks one day,
  For to see the ships discharging in the basins where they lay;
  And the cargoes that I saw there they were every sort and kind,
  Every blessed brand of merchandise a man could bring to mind;
  There were things in crates and boxes, there was stuff in bags and bales,
  There were tea-chests wrapped in matting, there were Eastern-looking
      frails,
  There were baulks of teak and greenheart, there were stacks of spruce and
      pine,
  There was cork and frozen carcasses and casks of Spanish wine,
  There was rice and spice and cocoa-nuts, and rum enough was there
  For to warm all London’s innards up and leave a drop to spare;

  But of all the freights I found there, gathered in from far and wide,
  All the smells both nice and nasty from the Pool to Barkingside,
  All the harvest of the harbours from Bombay to Montreal,
  There was one that took my fancy first and foremost of them all;
  It was neither choice nor costly, it was neither rich nor rare
  And, in most ways you can think of, it was neither here nor there,
  It was nothing over-beautiful to smell nor yet to see—­
  Only bags of stuffy nitrate—­but it meant a lot to me.

  I forgot the swarming stevedores, I forgot the dust and din,
  And the rattle of the winches hoisting cargo out and in,
  And the rusty tramp before me with her hatches open wide,
  And the grinding of her derricks as the sacks went overside;
  I forgot the murk of London and the dull November sky—­
  I was far, ay, far from England, in a day that’s long gone by.