* * * * *

THE NEW SUBTRACTION.

(By a middle-class Martyr.)

      EUCLID is gone, dethroned,
      By dominies disowned,
  And modern physicists, Judaeo-Teuton,
      Finding strange kinks in space,
      Swerves in light’s arrowy race,
  Make havoc of the theories of NEWTON.

      Yet, mid this general wreck,
      These blows dealt in the neck
  Of authors of established reputation,
      Four methods unassailed
      Endured and never failed
  To guide our arithmetic calculations.

      But now at last new rules
      Are used in “Council Schools”
  In consequence of Governmental action;
      And newspapers abound
      In praise of the profound
  Importance of the so-called “New Subtraction.”

      New, maybe, but too well
      I know its influence fell;
  The “new subtraction” (which I suffer under)
      From what I earn or save
      By toiling like a slave
  Is just a euphemistic name for plunder.

* * * * *

    “At Richmond a discharged soldier was charged with stealing a pillow,
    valued at 7/6, the property of the Government....  The prisoner, who had
    a clean sheet, was fined 40/-.”—­Local Paper.

We can understand his wanting a fresh pillow to go with his clean sheet.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Golf Enthusiast (urging the merits of the game). “—­AND, BESIDES, IT’S SO GOOD FOR YOU.”

Unbeliever. “SO IS COD-LIVER OIL.”]

* * * * *

GOLDEN GEESE.

The London University Correspondent of The Observer has been deploring the fact that a number of professors and lecturers have lately resigned their poorly-paid academic positions in order to take up commercial and industrial posts at much higher salaries.  Among the instances he cites is that of a Professor of Chemistry at King’s College, who has been appointed Director of Research to the British Cotton Industry Research Association.

The movement, which the writer denounces as bearing “too obvious an analogy to the killing of the golden goose,” is not however confined to London University.  From the great seats of learning all over the country the same complaint is heard.  We learn, for instance, that Mr. Angus McToddie, until recently Professor of Physics at the John Walker University, N.B., has vacated that post on his appointment as Experimental Adviser to the British Constitutional Whisky Manufacturers’ Association.

Past and present alumni of Tonypandy will learn with regret that the University is to lose the services of its Professor of Live Languages, Mr. O. Evans, who is about to assume the responsible and highly-remunerated position of Director of Research to the Billingsgate Fishporters’ Self-Help Society.