[Illustration]

The President said he had no desire to waste the meeting’s valuable time.  He would at once address himself (and the company present) to the myth, if myth it could be called, which had immortalised his own name.  Need he say he alluded to the legend of “Little Jack Horner”? (Cheers.) Some commentators are of opinion that “HORNER.” was a typographical error for “HOMER.”  But the prefix; and the epithet combined to militate against this ingenious and plausible, but specious, theory.  “HOMER” was not in any sense “Little,” nor was his Pagan name “JACK.”  Again, “Corner,” in the second line, could not in any language have ever rhymed with “HOMER.”  He knew that “Cromer” furnished them with a rhyme for “HOMER;” but if this were accepted, what became of the ancient Greek, of the Syriac, of the Phoenician, of the Nimrodic legends, nay, of the very Iliad itself, if “HOMER” were a native of “Cromer”? (Loud and prolonged cheers.) No!  “Jack Horner,” or, as it was originally written, “Jakorna,” was of Scandinavian origin, and it was, in all probability, a mythmic rhyth—­No, beg pardon, he should say a rhythmic myth (Cheers) sung by a wandering Sam Oar Troupe on their visiting Egypt and the Provinces before the time of the Celtic-Phoenician O’SIRIS, or at least before the reign of RAMESES THE FIRST, ancestor of the great Scotch RAMSEY family—­(Cheers)—­at one of the social entertainments given on a non-hunting day by that eminent sportsman NIMROD.  Then came the question of where was “the corner” in which Jakorna secluded himself?  Of course, Christmas, as differentiating this pie from all others, was a modern substitution.  The original word was probably “Kosmik.” (The lecture was still proceeding when our Reporter left, the dryness of the subject having unfortunately affected his throat.)

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[Illustration:  A CONNOISSEUR.

Sir Pompey Bedell. “THIS BOTTLE OF ROMANEE-CONTI SEEMS RATHER CLOUDY, BROWN!  IT OUGHT TO BE ALL RIGHT.  I KNOW IT STANDS ME IN TWELVE GUINEAS A DOZEN!”

The New Butler. “THERE CERTAINLY HIS SOME SEDIMENT, SIR POMPEY; BUT IT’S OF NO CONSEQUENCE WHATEVER!  I TRIED A BOTTLE OF IT MYSELF THE OTHER DAY, AND FOUND IT FIRST-RATE!”]

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“WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?”

["The ’tehorni narod’—­the inconceivably ill-used, patient, long-suffering ‘black people,’ as the moujiks of White Russia are grimly denominated by their rulers—­are dying by thousands, of sheer starvation, without a hand being stretched out by the ‘Tchin’ to rescue them from the greedy jaws of Death.”—­Daily Telegraph.

    The moujiks are remonstrating and even rebelling in
    consequence.]