* * * * *

[Illustration:  “GOOD ’EVINGS!  WHERE YER GOIN’?”

“YE KEN YON THREE HUNS I JUST BROUGHT IN?  WEEL, THEY WANT TO PLAY WHIST, AN’ I’M GOING BACK TO TRY AND PICK UP A FOURRTH.”]

* * * * *

“Southport, December 9th.—­Miss ——­ presented vegetarian literature and a box of vegetarian sausages to a Sale of Work in connection with the United Methodist Church, High Park.  The gifts led to much thought and inquiry.”—­Vegetarian Messenger.

In spite of a natural disinclination to look a gift sausage in the mouth.

* * * * *

A CALL TO THE COW PONIES.

  They sent us from Coorong and Cooper
    The pick of the Wallaby Track
  To serve us as gunner and trooper,
    To serve us as charger and hack;
  From Budgeribar to Blanchewater
    They rifled the runs of the West,
  That whatever his fate in the slaughter
    A man might ride home on the best.

  We dealt with the distant Dominion,
    We bought in the far Argentine;
  The worth of our buyers’ opinion
    Is proved to the hilt in the line;
  The Clydes from the edge of the heather,
    The Shires from the heart of the grass,
  And the Punches are pulling together
    The guns where the conquerors pass.

  So come with us, buckskin and sorrel,
    And come with us, skewbald and bay;
  Your country’s girth-deep in the quarrel,
    Your honour is roped to the fray;
  Where flanks of your comrades are foaming
    ’Neath saddle and trace-chain and band,
  We look for the kings of Wyoming
   To speak for the sage-brush and sand.

W.H.O.

* * * * *

=Commercial Candour.=

From an Indian trade-circular:—­

    “All our goods are guaranteed made of the best material and equal
    to none in the market.”

* * * * *

    “The approach of the storm was heralded by a magnificent display
    of, for a time, almost intermittent lightning.”—­Pall Mall
    Gazette.

Followed, it may be presumed, by well-nigh interrupted peals of thunder and nearly occasional downpours of rain.

* * * * *

“One always feels humiliated when one is stumped about a quite common thing....  All you could see a little way iff was that they were very dwarg and very thick, and the peculiar coloul baffled us....”

    A Country Diary in “Manchester Guardian."

Stumped we may be by the above, but humiliated—­never!

* * * * *

=PETHERTON’S PUBLICATIONS.=

A glance at a well-known publisher’s window, during a recent visit to London, provided me with material for a little possible quiet amusement, and with this end in view I penned the following:—­