Having roamed into Egypt, according to plan,
    Along with my fellows (a merry Co.),
  Having carried a pack from Beersheba to Dan
    And footslogged from Gaza to Jericho,
  I’ll not seek a fresh inaccessible spot
    In order to slaughter a new brute;
  To me inaccessible’s anywhere not
    To be found on a regular tube route.

  For barbarous jungles or desolate streams
    I don’t give a tuppenny damlet;
  For, candidly, London revisited seems
    A very endurable hamlet;
  Though others may find her excitements too mild
    And sigh for things gladder or madder,
  I’m fully resolved that the call of the wild
    Shall find me as deaf as an adder.

* * * * *

    “Trouser maker wanted; constant.”—­Jewish Chronicle.

A very desirable quality in a composer of continuations.

* * * * *

“STRANGE BIGAMY STORY.

    “MUNITIONER SAID TO HAVE POSED AS A WEALTHY MAN.”

    Evening News.

The strange thing, of course, is that he should have needed to pose.

* * * * *

THE TRAGEDY OF THE SUPER-PATRIOT.

If you happen to be standing upon the platform of Ealing Common station at about nine o’clock on a week-day morning you will see a poor shrunken figure with a hunted expression upon his face come creeping down the stairs.  And as the train comes in he will slink into a carriage and hide himself behind his newspaper and great tears will come into his eyes as he reads the correspondence column and thinks of the days when his own letters used to be published over the signatures of “Volunteer,” “Patriot,” or “Special Constable of Two Years’ Service.”  And this sorry figure is Mr. Coaster, whose patriotism proved his undoing.

Before he lived in Ealing he had a little cottage at Ramstairs, on the Kentish coast.  Every morning he would travel up to the City, and every evening he would return to Ramstairs, not to the carpet slippers and the comforts of home, but to the brassard and the rigorous routine of the drill-hall.

And the little drill-hall was filled with the noise of war as the Men of Kent marched hither and thither, lashed by the caustic tongue of the Territorial sergeant, with all the enthusiasm of the early Saxons who flocked to HAROLD’S standard in order to repel the Danes.

For Mr. Coaster was as great a patriot as any of the old Saxons.  In a burst of enthusiasm he joined the Special Constables; in an explosion of wrath, following the bombardment of Scarborough, he enlisted in the Kentish Fencibles, and in a wave of self-sacrifice he enrolled himself in the Old Veterans’ Fire Brigade.  And he had badges upon each lapel of his coat and several dotted all over his waistcoat.

He belonged to a noble company of patriots.  All true Men of Kent who were past the fighting age joined one or other of these institutions, but luckily not more than one.