A small boy, born in a Turkish harem, is said to have forty-eight step-mothers living.  Our office-boy, however, is still undefeated in the matter of recently defunct grandmothers.

* * *

The number of accidental deaths in France is attaining alarming proportions.  It is certainly time that a stop was put to the quaint custom of duelling.

* * *

A rat that looks like a kangaroo and barks like a prairie dog is reported in Texas, says The Columbia Record.  We can only say that, when we last heard that one, it was an elephant with white trunk and pink eyes.

* * *

“Why do leaders of the Bar wear such ill-fitting clothes?” asks a contemporary.  A sly dig, we presume, at their brief bags.

* * *

A reduction in prices is what every housewife in the land is looking for, says The Daily Express.  It is not known how our contemporary got hold of this idea.

* * *

There is no truth in the report that The Daily Mail has offered a prize of a hundred pounds to the first person who can prove that it has been talking through its prize hat.

* * *

“What should The Daily Mail hat be worn with?” asks an enthusiast.  “Characteristic modesty” is the right answer.

* * *

Emigrants to Canada, it is stated, now include an increasingly large proportion of skilled workers.  Fortunately, thanks to the high wages they earn at home, we are not losing the services of our skilled loafers.

* * *

A burglar who was recently sentenced in the Glasgow Police Court was captured while in the act of lowering a chest of drawers out of a window with a rope.  The old method of taking the house home and extracting the furniture at leisure is still considered the safest by conservative house-breakers.

* * *

Found under a bed in a strange house at Grimsby, a man told the police who arrested him that he was looking for work.  It was pointed out to him that the usual place for men looking for work is in bed, not under it.

* * *

In a recent case a Hull bargee gave his name as ALFAINA swash.  Nevertheless the Court did not decide to hear the rest of his evidence in camera.

* * *

A cyclist who stopped to watch a stag-hunt near Tivington Cross, in Somerset, was tossed into the hedge by the stag.  On behalf of the beast it is claimed that the cyclist was off-side.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  “She don’t ’ARF Swank since ’er Farver was knocked over by A Rolls-Royce.”]

* * * * *

    “The Czecho-Slovaks will shortly be able to see the successful
    play, ‘The Right to Stroke.’”—­Evening Paper.

Good news for the local pussies.