“Canon Cooper O’Filley, known as the ‘Walking Parson,’ has decided
    to celebrate his seventieth birthday by walking from Yorkshire to
    Madrid.”—­Sunday Paper.

An even better-known “Walking Parson,” Mr. COOPER, of Filey, will have to look to his laurels now that this Irish pedestrian has entered the lists.

* * * * *

    “Mr. J.B.  Fagan has decided to revive ‘Twelfth Night’ with the
    original cast at the Court Theatre.”—­Daily Graphic.

We trust that when Mr. FAGAN revives the “original cast” he will not omit to provide also against the inevitable call of “Author!” and settle the BACON-SHAKSPEARE controversy once for all.

* * * * *

THE VEGES ON STRIKE.

(A Dream.)

  A noise arose of earnest men
    Refusing imitation duck;
  It was a dreadful moment when
    The Beetroot-eaters struck,
  And all around untasted stood
  Rations of Mr. Kilo’s favourite food.

  For some forsook the sacred rules
    And pulled, despite their master’s word,
  Ham sandwiches from reticules;
    On every side one heard
  The sharp staccato lettuce-crunch
  Merged in the howls of carnivores at lunch.

  And one conspirator leaped up
    Amid the clash of tinkling spoons
  And poured into a protose cup
    His helping of stewed prunes;
  And, blood-red presager of doom,
  Half a tomato hissed across the room.

  And angry “Pshaws” and long “Tut-tuts”
    Proceeded from that concourse dense,
  And “Nuts,” they wailed, “we want more nuts—­
    More nuts at less expense!”
  Till Mr. Ambrose Kilo came
  And hushed the berserk banqueters to shame.

  “Heroes,” he cried, with lifted hand,
    “And comrades of the meatless life,
  Shall the great cause for which we stand”
    (Here someone dropped a knife)
  “Fall into disrepute?” (Loud roars
  Of “No, not it,” from contrite nucivores).

  “Bearing aloft a stainless shield
    That none may smirch without remorse,
  This management declines to yield
    To crude displays of force;
  Yet, since it seems the general wish,
  Mock-cutlets will be five-pence less per dish.”

  He ceased, and trembling fingers cleared
    All vestiges of meat away;
  The smiling handmaids reappeared
    With mounds of buttered hay;
  Silence replaced the storm-tossed scenes;
  There was no sound save masticated beans.

  EVOE.

* * * * *

From “Answers to Correspondents”: 

“A bellion, according to the French and American method of numeration, is a thousand millions, or 1,000,000,000.  According to the English method, it is a million millions, or 1,000,000,000.”—­Irish Paper.

We should have liked to know the estimated value of a re-bellion, according to the Irish method, but we understand that there is no accounting for that.