***

“If you had let the boy eat it, it would have punished him a great deal more than I can,” said the North London magistrate to a man who was prosecuting a boy for stealing an unripe pear.  It is a splendid tribute to the humanity of our stipendiary magistrates that the heroic offer of the boy to accept the greater punishment was promptly refused.

***

A workman at Kinlochleven, Argyllshire, found a live crab in a pocket of sand at a depth of more than ten feet.  On being taken to the police-station and shown the “All Clear” notice the cautious crustacean consented to go straight home.

***

At a flower-day sale at Grimsby one thousand pounds was paid by a local shipowner for a blue periwinkle.  In recognition of his generosity no charge was made for the pin.

***

A Vienna telegram states that the Emperor Karl has handed the Grand Cross of St. Stephen to the German Chancellor.  The latter quite rightly protests that Herr Bethmann-HOLLWEG is the real culprit.

***

From Scotland comes the news that an inmate of a workhouse has received an income-tax form to fill in.  This is considered to be but a foretaste of the time when all income-tax papers will have to be addressed to the workhouses.

* * * * *

In a Gloucester meadow, Lieutenant JAGGARD has picked a mushroom weighing ten ounces and measuring twenty-seven inches in circumference.  Eyewitnesses describe the gallant officer’s enveloping movement as a really brilliant piece of single-handed work.

***

The Prussian Military Press Bureau, among its other fantasies, has discovered with horror that Calais has been leased to England for ninety-nine years.  Our own information is that the situation is really worse than that, the lease being granted alternatively for ninety-nine years “or the duration of the War.”

***

An official statement points out that the work of the National Service Department is continuing without interruption pending the appointment of a new Director-General.  It appears that the members of the staff have expressed a desire to die in harness.

* * * * *

IDYLLS of the king of Prussia.

A fragment.

  So spake Sir Gerard (U.S.A.) and ceased. 
  Then answered William, talking through his hat: 
  “When first the heathen rose against our realm,
  That haunt of peace where all day long occurred
  The cooing of innumerable doves,
  I hailed my knighthood where I sat in hall
  At high Potsdam the Palace, and they came;
  And all the rafters rang with rousing Hochs.