[Illustration:  Urchin (with an inborn terror of the Force). “Oo, MUVVER!  IT WON’T, WILL IT?”]

* * * * *

OMINOUS.

    “——­went every morning to a firm of sausage-makers by whom he was
    employed as a horse-dealer.”—­Irish Paper.

* * * * *

“Rome, Saturday.

    “The announcement is made to-day of the award by the King [of Italy]
    of gold medals to Lieutenant Giuseppe Castruccio and I sentence him
    to three months’ hard.”—­Manchester Evening Chronicle.

When will British journalists learn not to interfere with the internal affairs of friendly nations?

* * * * *

THE LAST MATCH.

  This is the last, the very, very last. 
  Its gay companions, who so snugly lay
  Within the corners of their fragile home,
  All, all are lightly fled and surely gone;
  And their survivor lingers in his pride,
  The last of all the matches in the house;
  For Mr. Siftings says he has no more,
  And Siftings is an honourable man,
  And would not state a fact that was not so. 
  For now he has himself to do without
  The flaming boon of matches, having none,
  And cannot furnish us as he desires,
  Being a grocer and the best of men,
  But murmurs vaguely of a future week
  When matches shall be numerous again
  As leaves in Vallombrosa and as cheap. 
  Blinks, the tobacconist, he too is spent
  With weary waiting in a matchless land;
  What Siftings cannot get cannot be got
  By men like Blinks, that young tobacconist,
  Who tried with all a patriot’s fiery zeal
  To join the Army, but was sent away
  For varicose and too protuberant veins;
  And being foiled of all his high intent
  Now minds the shop and is a Volunteer,
  Drilling on Sundays with the rest of them;
  He too, amid his hoards of cigarettes,
  Is void of matches as he’s full of veins. 
  So here’s a good match in a naughty world,
  And what to do with it I do not know,
  Save that somehow, when all the place is still,
  It shall explode and spurt and flame and burn
  Slowly away, not having thus achieved
  The lighting of a pipe or any act
  Of usefulness, but having spent itself
  In lonely grandeur as befits the last
  Of all the varied matches I have known.

* * * * *

OUR SAMSONS.

    “Wanted at once.—­Reliable Man for carrying off motor
    lorry.”—­Clitheroe Advertiser.

* * * * *

    “To-day the man possesses a second tumb, serviceable for all
    ordinary purposes.”—­Belfast Evening Telegraph.

In these days of restricted rations it seems a superflous luxury.

* * * * *