MISTER JACKY'S VADE MECUM FOR THE EASTER HOLIDAYS.
Question. What is the chief object you wish to attain during the Vacation?
Answer. To have the best time possible under the most favourable conditions.
Q. Is the comfort of your relations and friends to be taken into serious account in attaining this desirable end?
A. Certainly not; the details to which you refer are unworthy of a moment's consideration.
Q. Have you any objection to upsetting all the household arrangements on your arrival?
A. Unquestionably no. If a morning performance commences at an hour early enough to require luncheon to be discussed at 12:30, why the déjeuner à la fourchette (as the French would say) must be partaken within half-an-hour of noon. In like manner, if an evening representation begins at seven, the dinner-hour must be put back to half-past five.
Q. If these alterations cause any disturbance of your father's habits, how would you deal with the matter?
A. I would not deal with the matter at all. I would leave all purely necessary explanations to my mother.
Q. During the time of your vacation will you approve of any dinner-parties?
A. I have a rooted objection to such entertainments when the guests are of my parents' selection. However, I have no objection to a few fellows, say, like Smith Major, or Brown Minor, dropping in to supper on a Sunday.
Q. Assuming that the hour you mention is your parents' favourite time for peace and quiet, does such an invasion suggest any reflection?
A. No. If my parents have become slow during my enforced absence from home in the search of knowledge, it is time they should have the benefit accruing from contact with my revivifying characteristics.
Q. Supposing your father expostulates with you, and advances the fact that you have received greater advantages than he himself enjoyed—for instance, that you have been to Eton—what should you reply?
A. Practically nothing. However, in the cause of justice and truth, it might be advisable to answer his statement of fact that "he had never been to Eton" with the reply, "Anyone could see that."
Q. If he complains that you do not rise until eleven, smoke cigarettes in the dining-room before lunch, smash the grand piano in the drawing-room, lame his favourite cob in the Row, and upset all his documents in the study, what answer would you make?
A. That you were not responsible for the training which he had taken under his personal control. He must be satisfied with the broad result of your bringing-up.
Q. If he declares his intention of addressing the Superintendent of your scholastic career on the matter, what would you do?
A. Explain that your present position in the school, to which you supposed you would have to reluctantly return, was lacking in the element of popularity, and that any further move in the direction of increased reduction in that element might possibly lead to your expulsion. Deprecate personal objection to expulsion, but suggest that such a course might, by preventing your getting employment in the Church, Army, or Bar, lead to your being on your parents' hands for life.
Q. When the time has all but arrived for your return to school, what should you do?
A. Promptly catch the whooping-cough, the influenza, or measles. You will then afford a sufficient reason for extending the length of your vacation indefinitely.
A TERRIBLE TURK.
Little Spinks. "Ah! once I was as Innocent as a Little Child! What I am now, your Sex has made me!"