We should not dare to treat a British florist like this.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Bright Beginner (as opponent is serving).  “DOES THE BALL COME TO ME NOW?”]

* * * * *

CHARIVARIA.

“The English comedians are great,” Mr. DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS is reported to have told an interviewer.  He has already accepted an invitation, we understand, to visit the Law Courts and hear Mr. Justice DARLING ask, “Who is MARY PICKFORD?”

* * *

A turkey with four legs has been born in Purley.  This attempt to divert attention from the visit of Miss MARY PICKFORD seems to have failed miserably.

* * *

“The increased wages in the catering trade,” says an employer, “will be borne by the public.”  How he came to think out this novel plan is what mystifies the man in the street.

* * *

There is one reason, we read, why tea cannot be sold cheaper.  If “The Profiteer” is not the right answer, it’s quite a good guess.

* * *

No burglar seems to visit the houses of the profiteers, says a Labour speaker.  Perhaps they have a delicacy about dealing with people in the same line of business.

* * *

For the seventh successive time, says a news item, there are no prisoners for trial at Stamford Quarter Sessions.  We can only remind the Court that bulldog perseverance is bound to tell in the end.

* * *

It is fairly evident that the Americans fully realised the physical impossibility of having American bacon and Prohibition in their own country at the same time.

* * *

Western Texas, says a cable message, is being eaten bare by a plague of grasshoppers.  Before Prohibition set in a little thing like that would never have been noticed in Texas.

* * *

Some of the new rich, says a gossip, only wear a suit once.  There are others like that, only it is a much longer once.

* * *

“A healthy boy’s skin should be well tanned after a holiday,” says a health-culture writer.  Surely not, unless he has done something to deserve it.

* * *

“But why a Ministry of Mines?” asks a contemporary.  The object, of course, is to put the deep-level pocket-searching operations of the CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER on a national basis.

* * *

Special arrangements have been made for expediting fish traffic on all railways.  Meanwhile it is to be regretted that, owing to the nation’s persistent neglect of scientific research, the self-delivering haddock is still in the experimental stage.

* * *

New Jersey has a clock with a dial thirty-eight feet across.  In any other country this would be the largest clock in the world.  In America it is just a full-size wrist-watch.

* * *

According to a medical writer, hearing can often be restored by a series of low explosions.  The patient is advised to stand quite close to a man who has just received his tailor’s bill.