“I shan’t ‘arf cut a dash,” she murmured as she drifted to the door; “an’ it might be the means o’ bringin’ it off this time.”

“Bringing what off, Elizabeth?”

“Bringin’ my new young man to the point, ’m.  You see, ‘e do love a bit o’ colour; an’ I knew ’e wouldn’t ’ave liked the rose doo barry trick-o, anyhow.”

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Proprietor (to the rescue of his assistants, who have failed to satisfy customer).  “ARE YOU SURE YOU KNOW WHAT KIND OF CAP YOU DO WANT?”

New “Blood." “WELL, YE SEE, IT’S LIKE THIS—­I’VE BOUGHT A MOTOR-BIKE, AND I THOUGHT AS ‘OW I’D LIKE A CAP WI’ A PEAK AT THE BACK.”]

* * * * *

    “Wanted, a General, plain cooking, gas fires, two boys 9 by 5.—­South
    Streatham.”—­Local Paper.

Nothing is said of their third dimensions.

* * * * *

A REMARKABLE COINCIDENCE.

    “To-day is the birthday of Lord Durham and his twin brother, the Hon.
    F.W.  Lambton, both of whom are sixty-five.” Provincial Paper.

* * * * *

    “Prince Arthur is well fitted for the high post to which he has been
    called.  He is the tallest member of the Royal Family.”—­Daily Paper.

But it is only fair to his Royal Highness to say that he has other qualifications as well.

* * * * *

From the recent debate on “Doctors and Secrecy":—­

    “If you begin to open the door you take away the sheet anchor upon
    which our professional work is based.”—­Daily Paper.

We trust that the speaker mixes his medicines more discreetly than his metaphors.

* * * * *

ON WITH THE DANCE.

I have been to a dance; or rather I have been to a fashionable restaurant where dancing is done.  I was not invited to a dance—­there are very good reasons for that; I was invited to dinner.  But many of my fellow-guests have invested a lot of money in dancing.  That is to say, they keep on paying dancing-instructors to teach them new tricks; and the dancing-instructors, who know their business, keep on inventing new tricks.  As soon as they have taught everybody a new step they say it is unfashionable and invent a new one.

This is all very well from their point of view, but it means that, in order to keep up with them and get your money’s worth out of the last trick you learned, it is necessary during its brief life of respectability to dance at every available opportunity.  You dance as many nights a week as is physically possible; you dance on week-days and you dance on Sundays; you begin dancing in the afternoon and you dance during tea in the coffee-rooms of expensive restaurants, whirling your precarious way through littered and