And the Raven still is sitting, croaking statements most unfitting,
On BRITANNIA’s much-peeled bust that’s placed above my Office-door,
And if Pangloss, e’en in seeming, lent an ear to his dark
dreaming,
Useless were official scheming, grants of millions by the score,
For my soul were like the shadow that he casts upon the floor,
Dark and dismal evermore!

* * * * *

[Illustration:  THINGS ONE WOULD RATHER HAVE EXPRESSED DIFFERENTLY.

Aunt Jane.  “THAT MAKES THREE WEDDINGS IN OUR FAMILY WITHIN A TWELVEMONTH!  IT WILL BE YOUR TURN NEXT, MATILDA!”

Matilda.  “OH, NO!”

Aunt Jane.  “WELL, THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY THINGS HAPPEN SOMETIMES, YOU KNOW!”]

* * * * *

TUPPER’S PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY UP TO DATE.

["The range of our inquiry was intended to include the whole migratory range for seals....  Our movements were kept most secret.”—­Sir George Baden-Powell on the Work of the Behring Sea Commission.]

  We came, we saw, we—­held our tongues (myself—­BADEN-POWELL—­and
          Mr. DAWSON.)
  We popped on each seal-island “unbeknownst,” and what we
          discovered we held our jaws on. 
  We’d five hundred interviews within three months, which I think
          “cuts the record” in interviewing,
  Corresponded with ’Frisco, Japan, and Russia; so I hope you’ll
          allow we’ve been “up and doing.” 
  (Not up and saying, be’t well understood).  As TUPPER (the
          Honourable C.H., Minister
  Of Fisheries) said, in the style of his namesake, “The fool
          imagines all Silence is sinister,
  “But the wise man knows that it’s often dexterous.”  Be sure no
          inquisitive shyness or bounce’ll
  Make us “too previous” with our Report, which goes first to the
          QUEEN and the Privy Council. 
  Some bigwig’s motto is, “Say and Seal,” but as TUPPER remarked a
          forefinger laying
  To the dexter side of a fine proboscis, “Our motto at present is,
          Seal without saying!”

* * * * *

LEGAL QUERY.—­The oldest of the thirteen Judges on the Scotch Bench is YOUNG.  Any chance for a Junior after this?

* * * * *

THE TRAVELLING COMPANIONS.

NO.  XII.

SCENE—­In front of the Hotel Bodenhaus at Spluegen.  The Diligence for Bellinzona is having its team attached.  An elderly Englishwoman is sitting on her trunk, trying to run through the last hundred pages of a novel from the Hotel Library before her departure.  PODBURY is in the Hotel, negotiating for sandwiches.  CULCHARD is practising his Italian upon a very dingy gentleman in smoked spectacles, with a shawl round his throat.