But you—­ah, you were our pride, our treasure,
    Care-free child of a kingly race. 
  Undemonstrative?  Yes, in a measure,
    But every movement replete with grace. 
      Whiles we mocked at the monkeys’ tricks
      Or pored apart on the apteryx;
  These could yield but a passing pleasure;
    Yours was the primal place.

  How our little ones’ hearts would flutter
    When your intelligent eye peeped out,
  Saying as plainly as words could utter,
    “Hurry up with that Brussels-sprout!”
      How we chortled with simple joy
      When you bit that impudent errand-boy;
  “That’ll teach him,” we heard you mutter,
    “Whether I’ve got the gout.”

  Fairest, rarest in all the Zoo, you
    Bound us tight in affection’s bond;
  Now you’re gone from the friends that knew you,
    Wails the whaup in the Waders’ Pond;
      Wails the whaup and the seamews keen a
      Song of sorrow; but you, Georgina,
  Frisk for ever where warm winds woo you,
    There, in the Great Beyond.

ALGOL.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  TECHNICALITIES OF DEMOBILISATION.

Officer.  “WHAT ARE THESE MEN’S TRADES OR CALLINGS, SERGEANT?” Sergeant.  “SLOSHER, SLABBER AND WUZZER, SIR.”]

* * * * *

A CONTRA APPRECIATION.

LORD NORTHCLIFFE has recently contributed a remarkably outspoken criticism of Mr. LLOYD GEORGE by way of “send-off” to his latest journal, The New Illustrated.  The following extracts from an article about to appear in The Pacific Monthly, kindly communicated to us by wireless, seem to indicate that the PREMIER is indisposed to take it lying down:—­

“In a letter recently published without my authority I said that I was unable to control or influence him.  This was true at the time and remains true now.  Time and again have efforts been made to harness his energies to the State, but they have never succeeded.  The responsibilities of office are irksome to his imperious temperament.  There is something almost tragic in a figure, equipped with the qualities of an hereditary autocrat, endeavouring to accommodate himself to the needs of a democracy.  The spectacle of this purple Emperor of the Press, with his ear constantly glued to the ground, is not wanting in pathos.  With him the idols of yesterday are the pet aversions of to-day.  He denounces me as ’a political chameleon, taking on the colour of those who at the moment happen to be his associates.’  But what are you to say of a man who clamours for a saviour of the situation and then turns him into a cock-shy; of a Napoleon who is continually retiring to Elba when things are not going as he likes; of a politician who claims the privileges but refuses the duties of a Dictator?