Doctors vow, in tones despotic,
    I must dig ’neath basement floors,
  Lest diseases called zymotic
    Enter in at all my pores. 
  PARKES, of sanitation master,
    Wanted “purity and light;”
  I’m content to risk disaster,
    With unhygienic night.

* * * * *

QUEER QUERIES.—­HYMENEAL.—­I have been asked to attend the wedding of a friend, and respond to the toast of “The Ladies.”  I have never done such a thing before, and feel rather nervous about it.  My friend says that I must “try and be very comic.”  I have thought of one humorous remark—­about the “weaker sex” being really stronger—­which I fancy will be effective, but I can’t think of another.  Would one good joke of that sort be sufficient? A propos of the lady marksman at Bisley, I should like to advise all ladies to “try the Butts,” only I am afraid this might be taken for a reference to the President of the Divorce Division.  How could I work the Jackson case in neatly?  Would it be allowable to pin my speech on the wedding-cake, and read it off?  Also, could I wear a mask?  Any hints would be welcomed by—­BEST MAN.

* * * * *

NOT QUITE POLITE.—­The Manager of the Shaftesbury Theatre advertises “three distinct plays at 8.15, 9.15, and 10.”  Distinct, but not quite clear.  Anyhow, isn’t it rather a slur on other Theatres where it implies the plays, whether at 8.15, 9.15, or 10, are “indistinct.”

* * * * *

SOME CIRCULAR NOTES.

Prospect of Holiday—­An Entree—­A Character in the Opening—­Light and Leading—­French Exercise—­Proposition—­Acceptation—­Light Comedian—­Exit—­Jeudi alors—­The Start.

CHAPTER I.

I am sitting, fatigued, in my study.  I have not taken a holiday this year, or last, for the matter of that.  Others have; I haven’t.  Work! work! work!—­and I am wishing that my goose-quills were wings ("so appropriate!” whisper my good-natured friends behind their hands to one another), so that I might fly away and be at rest.  To this they (the goose-quills, not the friends) have often assisted me ere now.  Suddenly, as I sit “a-thinking, a-thinking,” my door is opened, and, without any announcement, there stands before me a slight figure, of middle height, in middle age, nothing remarkable about his dress, nothing remarkable about his greyish hair and close-cut beard, but something very remarkable about his eyes, which sparkle with intelligence and energy; and something still more remarkable about the action of his arms, hands, and thin, wiry fingers, which suggests the idea of his being an animated semaphore worked by a galvanic battery, telegraphing signals against time at the rate of a hundred words a minute, the substantives being occasionally expressed, but mostly “understood,”—­pronouns and prepositions being omitted wholesale.