[Illustration:  “OW D’YER LIKE BEING PUT ON TRANSPORT WORK, MATE?” “BLIMEY!  WHAT THE DOOCE MADE ME TELL ’EM I’D ONCE DRUV A DONKEY!”]

* * * * *

Domestic Intelligence.

    “Owing to doctor’s orders Mrs. ——­ has been obliged to cancel
    all her engagements during Baby Week.”—­Morning Paper.

* * * * *

I STOOD AGAINST THE WINDOW.

  I stood against the window
    And looked between the bars,
  And there were strings of fairies
    Hanging from the stars;
  Everywhere and everywhere
    In shining swinging chains,
  Like rainbows spun from moonlight
    And twisted into skeins.

  They kept on swinging, swinging,
    They flung themselves so high
  They caught upon the pointed moon
    And hung across the sky;
  And when I woke next morning
    There still were crowds and crowds
  In beautiful bright bunches
    All sleeping on the clouds.

* * * * *

From a constable’s evidence:—­

    “In his attempt to arrest her she threw herself on the ground
    and tried to smack his face.”—­Weekly Dispatch.

The long arm of the law resents such presumptuous rivalry.

* * * * *

    “ALL KINDS OF DEVILS MADE TO ORDER. ——­ & ——­,
    SHEFFIELD.”—­The Ironmonger.

This looks uncommonly like an offer to trade with the enemy.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Wife (to warrior, whose politeness to the waitress has been duly noted).  “HUM!  YOU SEEM TO ’AVE COME BACK ’ALF FRENCH.”]

* * * * *

THE GIPSY SOLDIER

  The gipsy wife came to my door with pegs and brooms to sell
  They make by many a roadside fire and many a greenwood dell,
  With bee-skeps and with baskets wove of osier, rush and sedge,
  And withies from the river-beds and brambles from the hedge.

  With her stately grace, like PHARAOH’S queen (for all her broken
          shoon),
  You’d marvel one so tall and proud should ever ask a boon,
  But “living’s dear for us poor folk” and “money can’t be had,”
  And “her man’s in Mespotania” and “times is cruel bad!”

  Yes, times is cruel bad, we know, and passing strange also,
  And it’s strange as anything I’ve heard that gipsy men should go
  To lands through which their forbears trod from some unknown abode
  The way that ended long ago upon the Portsmouth Road.

  I wonder if the Eastern skies and Eastern odours seem
  Familiar to that gipsy man, as memories of a dream;
  Does Tigris’ flow stir ancient dreams from immemorial rest
  Ere ever gipsy poached the trout of Itchen and of Test?