And angry "Pshaws" and long "Tut-tuts" Proceeded from that concourse dense, And "Nuts," they wailed, "we want more nuts-- More nuts at less expense!" Till Mr. Ambrose Kilo came And hushed the berserk banqueters to shame.
"Heroes," he cried, with lifted hand, "And comrades of the meatless life, Shall the great cause for which we stand" (Here someone dropped a knife) "Fall into disrepute?" (Loud roars Of "No, not it," from contrite nucivores).
"Bearing aloft a stainless shield That none may smirch without remorse, This management declines to yield To crude displays of force; Yet, since it seems the general wish, Mock-cutlets will be five-pence less per dish."
He ceased, and trembling fingers cleared All vestiges of meat away; The smiling handmaids reappeared With mounds of buttered hay; Silence replaced the storm-tossed scenes; There was no sound save masticated beans.
"A bellion, according to the French and American method of numeration, is a thousand millions, or 1,000,000,000. According to the English method, it is a million millions, or 1,000,000,000."--_Irish Paper_.
We should have liked to know the estimated value of a re-bellion, according to the Irish method, but we understand that there is no accounting for that.
[Illustration: _Cinema Photographer_. "WOULD YOU MIND DOING THAT BIT AGAIN? I FORGOT TO TURN THE HANDLE."]
(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.)
A book of little novels, or long-shorts, from the pen of Mr. ROBERT HICHENS, will be welcomed with pleasure by a very large public. _Snake-Bite_ (CASSELL) contains a half-dozen various tales, all but one of which are eminently characteristic of their author. It sounds unkind to add that this one is for artistry the best of the bunch; but I mean no more than that Mr. HICHENS has here done very well a slight and delicate sketch of a style not generally associated with his work. In the name-piece his admirers will find themselves on more familiar ground--none other indeed than that well-known desert in which they have enjoyed such delicious thrills in the same company already. When Mr. HICHENS' characters get the sand in their eyes almost anything may be expected of them. Here he has given us a new version of the ancient scheme of two men and a woman, complicated in this instance by a cobra; the problem being, whether a doctor should cure his wife's lover of a snake-bite. More original is the longest story in the collection, one called "The Lost Faith," an affair of mental healing and love and crime too complex for compression. It is admirably told. It leads up to a situation as novel as it is dramatic--the confession of a young fanatic, who believes in a lady-healer so implicitly that he puts typhoid germs into the drink of a celebrated general in order to provide her with an impressive subject. As a sensation this wants some beating; though it failed to shake my own preference for the other story, which you will observe I have purposely left unnamed. You will, I hope, enjoy finding it for yourself.