It caught me hard this morning when I dressed
    And read the mirror’s verdict.  Ah, the pain
  Is gnawing like a canker at my breast,
    Is beating like a hammer in my brain;
    I must speak out or break beneath the strain.
  I’m going bald on top.  O cruel reef
    Where youthful hopes lie wrecked!  O dismal lane
  Whose end is but the sere and yellow leaf!

  ENVOI.

  Prince (Mr. Punch)! on Armageddon’s plain
    My love-locks fell a prey to Time, the thief. 
  Regrets are useless, unguents are in vain;
    Only remains the sere and yellow leaf.

* * * * *

THE COMMERCIAL TOUCH.

“Presiding at the concert given in connection with the ——­ Art Club’s annual exhibition of oil and water-colours, Mr. ——­ congratulated the club on the quality of its paintings, which, he thought, were remarkably cheap when cognisance was taken of the present high prices of materials.”—­Provincial Paper.

This critic has, as the Art jargon puts it, “a nice feeling for values.”

* * * * *

    “HOW I DIFFER FROM MY MOTHER.”

    By A Modern Woman.

    ’Women differ by the width of Heaven from what their mothers
    were.’—­MR. JUSTICE DARLING.

    “I do not smoke and I do not wear bare-back dresses, but I agree with
    Mr. Justice Darling—­there is the width of Heaven between my mother
    and I.”—­Evening News.

Let’s hope so, in the matter of grammar.

* * * * *

HUMOUR’S LABOUR LOST.

    Lochtermachty, N.B.  May 29th, 1919.

DEAR MR. PUNCH,—­My father and I have fallen out over the question of your literary judgment and sense of humour.  If I weren’t a filial daughter I’d say that he’s a ——­; but I am, so I won’t call him names.

The fact is that, before he became a professional Padre, he didn’t know that such things as senses of humour existed.  All that mattered in his life were Latin and Greek and Hebrew and the other pursuits of the classical scholar.  However, during his wanderings with the Army he has somehow managed to acquire what he calls “an appreciation of the laughable.”  And that is the cause of our divided house.

This morning at breakfast, while he was reading out the account of the proceedings of the General Assemblies, he came upon the interesting statement—­volunteered by an eminent Edinburgh divine—­that all the ministers of the Kirk have lost a stone in weight during the War, and that this works out at a loss of five tons of ministerial flesh to the United Free Church of Scotland.  Then, after he had tested the accuracy of the statistics, which he found quite incorrect, and I had meditated upon the bulk of matter encircled by the parental