Picture the feelings of the crowd when Casey merged the judge into the editor and kept declaring race after race a dead heat.  They rose at him as one man and clamoured for souvenirs.  What was left of Casey shook the dust of Ballybun off his feet, while our impulsive patriots were smashing his office furniture.

This only proves what I have often maintained, that popularity always makes a man unpopular in the long run.  Meanwhile The Ballybun Binnacle has ceased to appear, but I see from The Times there has been a movement in Berlin in favour of letting bygones be bygones.

* * * * *

BOOKS AND BOOKS.

    ["The last books of the Winter season are creeping out, and
    some are important and some are not.”—­Daily Chronicle.]

  The last books of Winter,
    Some slim and some stout,
  From the hands of the printer
    Are now “creeping out”;
  And it’s helpful to learn from
    A man on the spot
  That some are important
    And others are not.

  And yet the conviction
    Expressed in this guise
  In the matter of fiction
    I’d like to revise;
  For of the romances
    Unceasingly shot
  From the press, most are piffle
    And very few not.

  From minstrelsy’s melee,
    Its foam and its surge,
  A Keats or a Shelley
    May haply emerge;
  Or there may be a Tupper
    To leaven the lot—­
  Some bards are immortal
    And others are not.

  We’re certain to meet with—­
    The stock never fails—­
  Some Memoirs replete with
    Fatiguing details;
  But the chance isn’t great of
    A Lockhart and Scott,
  Or a Boswell and Johnson—­
    No, certainly not.

  Some prophet whose coming
    Is yet undivined
  May set the world humming
    And stagger mankind;
  It may be a Darwin
    Some publisher’s got
  Up his sleeve, or it may be
    Some one who is not.

  There may be some clinkers
    Now “creeping” to light,
  Tremendous deep thinkers
    Or high in their flight;
  There may be diffusers
    Of air that is hot;
  There may be a Bergson,
    Again there may not.

  Though the publishing season
    Is now on the wane,
  This isn’t a reason
    Why we should complain;
  For the view of the expert—­
    His “i’s” when we dot—­
  Is that some books are useful,
    But most of them rot.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Hostess (playfully).  “WHAT—­HAVEN’T YOU FINISHED YET?”

Sandy (regarding cake, from which he has been told to help himself).  “AH, BUT YE KEN, A CAKE O’ THIS SIZE ISNA SAE SOON EATEN AS YE MAY THENK.”]

* * * * *

From the report of a speech by the Chief Justice of New Zealand:—­