* * *

A petrified fish about fifty feet long has been discovered in Utah.  This is said to be the largest sardine and the smallest whale America has ever produced.

* * *

Building operations were interrupted in North London last week, when a couple of sparrows built a nest on some foundations just where a bricklayer was due to lay a brick the next day.

* * *

Six tourists motoring through the mountainous district of Ardeche Department fell a thousand feet down a precipice, but escaped without injury.  We understand that in spite of many tempting offers from cinematograph companies the motorists have decided not to repeat the experiment.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  The Girl. “Isn’t that Mr. Jones Bowling?”

The Enthusiast. “Yes.  The other day he took three wickets for six.”

The Girl. “How dreadful!  I’d no idea he drank.”]

* * * * *

Solving the holiday fare problem.

“None but the rich can pay the fare” is as true at this moment as when the words were first penned.

The reference, of course, is to the return fare, for the single fare of tomorrow is hardly more than we paid without complaint in years gone by for the journey there and back.

How comparatively few people seem to be aware that the solution of the difficulty lies in not returning.  Could anything be simpler?

Nobody wants to return.  In preparing for a holiday our thoughts are concentrated on when to go, where to go and how to get there.  Who bothers himself about when to come back, where to come back from, and how to do it?  After all, holiday-making is not to be confused with prize-fighting.

That we have come back in the past has been due as much to custom as to anything.  Someone introduced the silly fashion of returning from holidays, and we have unthinkingly acquired the habit.  Once we shake off this holiday convention the problem of the return fare is solved.

Just stay where you are and all will be well.  Sooner or later your friends or your employer (if your return is really considered desirable) will send a money-order.  But that is their look-out.  The point is that the return fare need not trouble you.  And you can please yourself as to what you buy with the money-order.

Why all this outcry then about the cost of travelling in the holiday season?

* * * * *

    “M.  Lappas, the young Greek tenor whose debut last season won him a
    host of fiends.”—­Daily Paper.

As Mephistopheles, we presume.

* * * * *