* * * * *

[Illustration:  A DISTINCTION WITH A DIFFERENCE.

Mistress (to applicant for situation, who has been dismissed, from her last place).  “SO YOU’VE JUST LEFT?  DIDN’T YOUR SITUATION SUIT YOU?”

Martha. “OH YES, ’M.  SITUATION SOOTED ME VERY WELL.  IT WAS ME, MUM, AS DIDN’T SOOT THE SITUATION!”]

* * * * *

FROM A LAHORE PAPER.—­“Punch,” the writer ought to have said “Mr. Punch,”—­“possesses a battery of guns, and maintains a standing army of 1,200 men.”  Quite correct.  Wonderful how they get the news out there.  The guns fire a hundred jokes per minute; all killing ones.  The standing army do the thing well, and will stand anything (well-iced) to all friends within reasonable limits, under command of Mr. Punch, President.

* * * * *

VERY NATURAL.—­Mrs. BROWN POTTER, tired of playing a Hero, is now coming out as a Heroine before the Chaff’dsbury Theatre is shut up.

* * * * *

ROD and RIVER is the title of a useful book about fly-fishing (it only needs “fly-leaves” for notes to make it perfect), written by a Major bearing the appropriate name of FISHER.  One note he might append for the benefit of intending Etonians, that those who, not having “passed” their swimming examination, venture to go on the “river”, are in danger of the “rod.”

* * * * *

MRS. RAM was told that Mr. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN is a giant in intellect.  She said, “I don’t know much about intellect, but he must be a very big giant to carry an orchard in his buttonhole.”

* * * * *

ODONT.!

(AN ODE TO THE MODERN FLORA.)

  Oh, Flora, fair Goddess of Flowers, skies brighten, the gardens
          are glowing,
  And lo! ’tis the season of Flower Shows, when everything seems
          “All-a-blowing!”
  And what the dickens you’ve been up to with the dictionary, I’m
          dashed if there’s any possibility of knowing.

  Talk about “Volapueck.”  Why, it isn’t a circumstance compared with
          the floral goddess’s crack-jaw. 
  I’ve been trying to read the account of a Flower Show to my wife. 
          Now, at patter-songs I’ve a slick tongue and slack jaw. 
  I can do “John Wellington Wells” pretty patly; but to read
          through a horticultural article
  Would give an alligator instantaneous tetanus; and of meaning
          the words seem to have no particle. 
  I should like to be introduced, in its Bornean home, to the
          glorious plant called Caelo Dyana. 
  But fancy a footman having to announce Madame SPATHOGLOTTIS
          KIMBALLIANA! 
  Odont.  Uro-Skinneri sounds like something medical and epidermic,