If my heart gets really noisy I do hope it won't shout for Beatrice. It would be so useless.
"Let us go hence, my heart; she will not hear" (_Swinburne_). * * * *
[Illustration: "HEARD THE LATEST RUMOUR UP FROM THE BACK, GEORGE? WAR'S GOING TO BE OVER NEXT WEEK."
"HO. WELL, I HOPE IT DON'T UPSET MY GOING ON LEAVE NEXT TUESDAY."]
["According to an enterprising American scientist a man's character can be told from the way he smokes a cigar."--_Weekly Paper_.]
For, instance, a man who snatches a cigar from somebody else's mouth and smokes it himself may be assumed to be of a grasping disposition.
The man who while smoking a cigar burns his finger is a man of few words and quick of action. Plumbers never burn their fingers like that.
The man who smokes his cigar right through without removing it from his mouth is a deep thinker. Lord NORTHCLIFFE always smokes one cigar right through before deciding what England really wants, and two when he has to decide which Cabinet Minister must go.
The man who accepts a cigar from a friend, lights it, sniffs and drops it behind his chair has no character worth mentioning.
Protect the birds and the insects will be in their crops. Destroy the birds and the crops will be in the insects.
"S.P. (Lincoln).--Humming-birds don't hum with their mouths. The humming is the vibration of their wings while flying--for the same reason that a blue-bottle or an aeroplane hums."--_Pearson's Weekly_.
So it is not the pilot rubbing his feet together, as we had been taught to believe.
[Illustration: _Uncle_. "BY JOVE, THERE'S A NICE QUIET-LOOKING GIRL JUST COME IN. WONDER WHO SHE IS." _Niece_. "HAVEN'T THE FOGGIEST. MUST BE PRE-WAR."]
_(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)_
_The Safety Candle_ (CASSELL) might have been called, but for the fact that the title has been used already, A Comedy of Age. For this is what it is--only perhaps less a comedy than a tragedy. _Agnes Tempest_ was called the Safety Candle, for the ingenious reason that, though attractive, she burnt nobody's wings. Returning as a middle-aging widow, after an unhappy wifehood in Africa, she meets on the boat two persons, _Captain Brangwyn_, a young man, and a girl-mother calling herself _Antonina Pisa_. Hence the tears. _Brangwyn_ she marries, doubtfully, half-defiantly, despite the difference in years between them; _Antonina_ is taken as a companion and very soon developes into a sick-nurse. For in the space between the ship-board engagement and the wedding a railway accident changes poor _Agnes_ from a still beautiful and active woman to a nerve-ridden invalid. But in spite of this she and _Brangwyn_ marry; and (with the much too attractive _Antonina_ always in evidence) you can guess the result. One odd point; you will hardly get any distance into Miss E.S. STEVENS' exceedingly well-written story without being struck by its resemblance to one of Mr. HICHENS' romances. The relative positions of the members of the triangle, middle-aged wife, young husband, and girl are exactly those of _The Call of the Blood_; while the Sicilian setting is identical. But this of course is by no means to accuse Miss STEVENS of plagiarism; her development of the situation, and especially the tragedy that resolves it, is both original and convincing. The end indeed took me wholly unawares, since as a hardened novel-reader I had naturally been expecting--but read it, and see if you also are not startled by a refreshing departure from the conventional.