While it lasts, even a bloodless revolution can be very tiresome; almost as disquieting as a general election.  Everybody who isn’t revoluting is mobilised to keep the revolution from being molested.  There are no trams, because the drivers are demonstrating; no shops, because the shopmen are mobilised; no anything, because everyone is out watching the fun.  So you go into the square to watch also.  You see little groups of revolutionaries looking sullen and laboriously class-hating.  You see a lot of soldiers looking very ordinary but trying not to.  The riff-raff scowl at the soldiers, who are ordered out to shoot at them.  The soldiers scowl at the riff-raff at whom they are ordered not to shoot.  And, for some reason which the experts have not yet fathomed, it always pours with rain.

When we had succeeded in persuading the soldier who was posted to guard our hotel that we were not the proletariat and might safely be let pass, we found a gathering of inside-knowledge people discussing the situation.  The Government ought to have known all about it long before—­how the Bolshevists were stirring up trouble.  “They did,” said we; “we told them.”  There was a silence at this, but a smile on the face of the audience which we at first mistook for incredulity.  We referred darkly to our private information, derived, as I told you in my last, from the Italian juggler.  “Did he do juggling tricks with your ink-pots too?” asked the French element.  “How much money did you give him?” asked all the other elements.  “And I suppose he also told you,” said the Italian officer, “that he had no confidence in his own people and that the British alone enjoyed his respect?”

At this moment the Americans came in and asked us to quit arguing and attend while they told us how they had unearthed the great plot....  When together we reckoned up the Italian juggler’s net takings we realised that it is an ill revolution which brings no one any good.

  Yours ever,
  HENRY.

(To be continued.)

* * * * *

CUBBIN’ THRO’ THE RYE.

    [Suggested by a recently reported incident in the Midlands,
     when a pack divided, one part getting out of hand and running
     among standing crops.]

  Gin a body meet a body
    Cubbin’ thro’ the rye,
  Gin a body tell a body,
    “Seed ’em in full cry,”
  Useless then to blame the puppies,
    Useless too to lie;
  Whippers-in can’t always stop ’em,
    Even when they try.

  Gin a body meet a body
    Cubbin’ thro’ the rye,
  What a body calls a body
    Dare I say?—­not I;
  Farmers get distinctly stuffy,
    Neither are they shy,
  And Masters, when they’re really rattled,
    Sometimes make reply.

* * * * *

BRAVE NEWS FOR PUSSYFOOT.

     “A good many Church-people at home have been pressing
    teetotalism, and are now pressing Prohibition, and it is
    possible that they may succeed about the time when the moon
    grows cold.”—­Weekly Paper.