Yes, it is all very “dramatic.”  It is exciting to think of an English lord nursing a grievance about a grasshopper for months and months, seeing grasshoppers in every corner, dreaming about grasshoppers....  But we must not waste time over the fantastic tale.  We have not yet solved our principal problem.  Why did Mr. Lloyd George call him a grasshopper—­a modest friendly little grasshopper?  Did he mean to suggest that Lord Northcliffe hears with his stomach or stridulates with his back legs?

Why not an earwig, or a black-beetle, or a wood-louse, or a centipede?  There are lots of insects more offensive than the grasshopper, and personally I would much rather be called a grasshopper than an earwig, which gets into people’s sponges and frightens them to death.

Perhaps he had been reading that nice passage in the Prophet Nahum:  “Thy captains are as the great grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known where they are.”  I do not know.  But The Encyclopaedia has a suggestive sentence:  “All grasshoppers are vegetable feeders and have an incomplete metamorphosis, so that their destructive powers are continuous from the moment of emergence from the egg until death.”

A.P.H.

* * * * *

    “The Mayor gave details showing how the Engineer’s salary had
    increased from L285 when he was appointed in 1811 to L600 at the
    present time.”—­Local Paper.

And think what he must have saved the ratepayers by not taking a pension years ago.

* * * * *

“Mr. ——­ thought that the whole Committee would wish to associate themselves with the Cemeteries Sub-Committee in their congratulations to Alderman ——­ upon his marriage.”—­Local Paper.

We do not quite see why this particular sub-committee should have taken the initiative.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  EVIL COMMUNICATIONS.

The Telephone.  “I’M GOING TO COST YOU MORE.”

Householder.  “WHY?”

The Telephone.  “OH, THE USUAL REASON—­INCREASING
INEFFICIENCY.”]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  A QUESTION OF TASTE.

The Wife. “You Must Get Yourself a Straw ’at, George.  A bowler don’t seem to go with a camembert.”]

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

“French Leave.”

The Mandarins of the Theatre, who are no wiser than other mandarins (on the contrary), have been long repeating the formula that the public won’t look at a War play.  If I’m not mistaken it will for many moons be looking at Captain Reginald Berkeley’s French Leave.  He labels it a “light comedy.”  That’s an understatement.  It is, as a matter of fact, a very skilful, uproarious and plausible farce, almost