“I believe you,” said Madame Marcot, “and touching was the joy of M. de Blanchet too, until he observed her mourning.  He was then inclined to be slightly hurt at her taking his death so readily for granted.  However, she soon explained the case; but, when he heard that a nameless member of the unspeakable race was occupying the place in the family vault that he had been reserving for himself for years past at considerable cost, he became exceedingly annoyed; and when, through the medium of his relations, he learned of the first-class funeral, and of the oak coffin studded with silver, and the expensive full choral mass, and the requiem specially written for the occasion, and the marble monument, his wrath was such that in pre-war days, and before he had undergone the reducing influence of the German hunger-diet, he would certainly have had an apoplectic seizure.  To a man of his economical turn of mind it was naturally enraging.  But the thing that put the climax on his exasperation was the bas-relief of his wife, ‘ridiculously svelte’ as he remarked, shedding tears over the ashes of a wretched Boche.

“The situation for him and for the family generally,” concluded Madame Marcot, “is, as you will readily conceive, one of extreme unpleasantness and delicacy.  The cost of exhuming the Hun, after the really outrageous expense of his interment, is one that a thrifty man like M. de Blanchet must naturally shrink from; indeed he assures me that his pocket simply does not permit of it.

“In the meantime he can never go to lay a wreath upon the tombs of his sainted father and mother, or pass through the cemetery on his way to mass (he is a good Catholic), without being reminded of the miserable interloper and all the circumstances of his magnificent first-class funeral.  Hence he is a man with a grievance—­an undying grievance, I may say—­for he is practically certain to have a ghost hereafter haunting the spot that ought to be its resting-place but isn’t.  Still, it is chic to have a ghost in the family.  The de Blanchets will be more distinguished than ever.”

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[Illustration:  “‘OW’S YOUR SON GETTIN’ ON IN THE ARMY, MRS. PODDISH?”

“FINE, THANKEE.  THEY’VE MADE ’IM A COLONEL.”

“OH, COME——­”

“CAPTAIN, THEN.”

“GO ON.  YOU MEAN CORPORAL, P’RAPS.”

“WELL, ’AVE IT THAT WAY IF YOU LIKE.  I KNOW IT BEGAN WITH A ‘K.’”]

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LIFTING AND UPLIFTING.

Our Canadian contemporary, Jack Canuck, publishes a protest against the invasion of Canada by British temperance reformers, whom it describes as “uplifters.”  Immediately below this protest it produces a picture from Punch, lifted without any acknowledgment of its origin.

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