THE HEIGHT OF COMFORT.

Q. I want to consult you about Flats. You must know all about them, as you have tried this kind of "high life" for a year. And I am quite charmed with the idea of getting one. Now, don't you find that they have many advantages over the old-fashioned separate house system?
A. Oh, a great many!
Q. I suppose that even in such paradises a few drawbacks do exist?
A. A few. For instance, did you notice, during your painful progress upstairs, a doctor coming out of the rooms just below us? No? Then you were fortunate. There's a typhoid case there, we hear.
Q. Dear me! Now I think of it, I did meet a woman dressed as a hospital nurse. But she was coming down from somewhere above you.
A. Yes. The people over our heads. It's a scarlet fever patient they have, I believe. We can hear the nurse moving about in the middle of the night. And chemists' boys with medicines call at our door, by mistake, at all hours.
Q. Still, they can't get in. Your flat is your castle, surely?
A. Quite so. It's a pity it isn't a roomier castle. Our bedrooms are like cupboards, and look out on a dark court. We have to keep the gas burning there all day.
Q. Oh, indeed! But then, being on one floor, living must be much cheaper, because you can do with only one servant?
A. That is true; but we find that the difficulty is to get servants to do with us. They hate being mastheaded like this; they miss the area, and the talks with the tradesmen, and so on.
Q. But they must go downstairs to take dust and cinders away?
A. No, those go down the shoot. At least, a good many of the cinders do, though some seem to stop on the way. Our downstair neighbours complain horribly, and threaten to summon us.
Q. Do they? On the whole, however, you find your fellow-residents obliging?
A. Oh, very! The landing window leads to some disputes. We like it open. The people upstairs prefer it shut. The case comes on at the police court next week.
Q. You surprise me! Then, as regards other expenses, you save, don't you, by paying no rates?
A. We do. That is why our landlord charges us for these eight rooms on one floor just double what we should have to pay for a large house all to ourselves.
Q. Thanks for giving me so much information. Of course, I knew there must be some disadvantages. And you won't be surprised to hear that we have taken a flat after all, as they are so fashionable?
A. On the contrary, I should be quite surprised if you didn't.

WELCOME TO "JOEY!"

SAD!

Sportsman (proud of his favourite). "Now that's a Mare I made entirely myself! Marvellously clever, I can tell you!"

Non-Sportsman (from town, startled). "Eh, what? Dear me! Wonderfully clever, certainly." (Mentally.) "Poor fellow, poor fellow! what a most extraordinary Hallucination!"

HOME RAILS.

(By a Mournful Moralist.)

Each day my heart with pity throbs;

Can sympathy refuse

The ready tears, the frequent sobs,

When reading City news?

Not long ago I daily found

That you were good and "strong"—

You gained but little, I'll be bound,

Nor kept that little long;

Yet I was happy, since it meant

That, for a blissful term,

You were so very excellent,

So "steady" and so "firm."

Prosperity brings pride to all;

You rose too high to sell.

Then—pride must always have a fall—

You lamentably fell.

Think what your altered state has cost.

Alas, you must confess

That you are ruined since you lost

Your noble steadiness!

"Unsettled" then—oh, feeble will!—

"Inactive" you were too.

There's Someone "finds some mischief still

For idle hands to do."

"Why be inactive? All should work.

Rise then, and do not seek

Good honest enterprise to shirk,

Because you're rather "weak."

Alas, what use exhorting that

Your fall you should annul?

When some remark that you are "flat,"

And others call you "dull."

At times I hoped that you would turn,

And mend your evil ways,

That you were "better," I would learn,

And "quiet" on some days.

But now your baseness fitly ends,

"Irregular"—and so

You are "neglected" by your friends,

Who all pronounce you "low."

This conduct gives me such a shock,

I wipe my streaming eyes—

I want to sell some railway stock;

I'm waiting for the rise!

The "Ultra Fashionable Dinner-hour" when Dickens wrote Martin Chuzzlewit.—It is mentioned by Montague Tigg, when that typical swindler gives Jonas Chuzzlewit an invitation to a little dinner. It was "seven." Very few have guessed it, but most correspondents have referred to the dinner-hour at Todgers's. But Todgers's was a very second-class establishment.

Somebody proposes another Dickensian query:—Scene—The wedding at Wardle's. Time—After the wedding breakfast:—"At dinner they met again, after a five-and-twenty-mile walk." Where did they breakfast, and where did they dine, and how many hours did men of Mr. Pickwick's and Mr. Tupman's build take to do a twenty-five-mile walk in?

The Golfer's Paradise.—Link-ed sweetness long drawn out.

The real Roads To Success.—Cecil Rhodes.

REX LOBENGULA.

["Rhymes are difficult things, they are stubborn things, Sir."—Fielding: Amelia.]

Lobengúla! Lobengúla!

How do you pronounce your name?

How do those who call you ruler

Your regality proclaim?

Does the stalwart Matabele

Seared with many a cruel scar,

Ere he gives his life so freely,

Hail you King Lobengulá?

Have I read in British journals,

On a 'bus en route to Holborn,

Telegrams where British Colonels

Have the cheek to call you Ló-ben?

Has your name some fearful meaning

Redolent of blood and bones,

Or am I correct in weening

It's vernacular for Jones?

Kaiser! Potentate! Dictator!

Any title that's sublime

Choose, but send us cis-equator

For your name the proper rhyme.

AFTER THE CALL.

["A further call of £5 per share has recently been made on the shareholders in one of the companies in the Balfour group.">[

After the call is over,

What is there left to do,

All absolutely vanished,

Left not a single sou.

Furniture, trinkets, money,

Gone, gone, alas! are they all;

What is there left but the workhouse

After the call?