QUEER QUERIES.
A Municipal Hall.—I see the County Council are thinking of spending nearly a million of the ratepayers' money in buying a site for a municipal palace in Parliament Street, because the members—pending the time when they are all elected to the Legislature—want to be as close to it as possible. Why not let them be still closer, in Westminster Hall itself, which is now untenanted? Or if the members don't like that, why not make a working arrangement with the House of Commons to use that chamber in the mornings before the M.P.'s come down to it? This would be something like an "in-and-out" clause, and would save no end of money.
True Economist.
Rewards to Raconteurs.—I am considered a first-rate storyteller and conversationalist; indeed, few dinner parties (at Lower Tooting) can get on without me. Do you think I could get elected to the Reform Club without paying the entrance subscription? I see that some members of that club have been left £2000 each as a reward for "brightening the evenings" of a deceased member, and I feel certain that had the testator known me, he would have increased my legacy to £4000 at least. My sparkling powers of conversation are often called a "gift," but I don't want them to be a gift if I could get anything for them.
Sydney Macaulay Hayward Smith.
Present! Fire! Bang-Kok!—"Three Frenchmen killed, two wounded; twenty Siamese killed, and twelve wounded,"—such is the first result of French Humann-ising influence in Siam.
A New Maritime Resort.—"I'm sure," observed Mrs. R., "that a really pleasant thing to do in the summer holidays would be to take a trip to the Specific Islands."
The Greatest Authority on the Working of the "In-and-Out" Clauses.—Mr. Sexton, M.P.!
Going Against the Grein.—Refusing to patronise the Independent Theatre.
French Billiards at Siam.—The Cannon Game.
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Transcriber's Note:
This issue contains some dialect.
Sundry damaged or missing punctuation has been repaired.
The corrections and explanations listed below are also indicated in the text by a dashed line at the appropriate place:
Move the mouse over the word, and the original text, or the explanation, appears.
Page 25: 'abreviating' corrected to 'abbreviating'.
"... as emphasizing, by descriptively abbreviating, these two epithets,..."
Page 30: 'Nickledy Nod' is correct [www . archive.org/stream/laysandlyrics00hawkgoog#page/n124]. (From: "Lays and Lyrics": Nickledy Nod. Dedicated to the "Sweet Girl Graduates of the School of Cookery." (After Punch.)) Page 33: 'where corrected to 'were' "True, for our wages, which were somewhere near the "Twenty-ones," Great expectations would have been a trifle rash." Page 34: 'nihil tetigit quod non ornavit' = 'he touched nothing without embellishing it' |