THE MINISTERING ANGEL.
[Yawning, it is now claimed, is an excellent thing for the health.]
Stretched prone upon my couch of pain,
An ache in every limb,
Fell influenza having slain
My customary vim,
I mused, disconsolate, about
The pattern of my pall,
When lo! I heard a step without
And Thomson came to call.
"Your ruddy health," I told him, "mocks
A hand too weak to grip
The tea-cup with its captive ox
And raise it to my lip;"
To which he answered he had come
To bring for my delight
Red posies of geranium
And roses pink and white.
'Twas kind of Thomson thus to seek
To mitigate my gloom,
But why did he proceed to speak
Of how he'd reared each bloom,
Telling in language far from terse
On what his blossoms fed
And how he made the greenfly curse
The day that it was bred?
He told me how he rose at dawn
To titivate the land
('Twas here that I began to yawn
Behind a courteous hand),
And how he thought his favourite pea
Had found the soil too dry
(And here I feared my yawns would be
Apparent to his eye).
On fruit and blossom good and bad
He rambled on unchecked,
Until his conversation had
Such curative effect
That in the end it drove away
My weak despondent mood.
I clasped his hand and blessed the day
He came to do me good.
"MORE DEARER PUBLICATIONS."—Daily Mail.
More dearer nor what they was? Dear, dear!
From Young India, the organ of Mr. Gandhi:—
"In our last issue the number of those in receipt of relief is given at 500. This is a printer's devil. The number is 5,000."
Mr. Gandhi ought to exorcise that devil.
"The tests were entirely satisfactory, and the pilot manœuvred for a quarter of an hour at a height of 500 metres and a speed of 150 millimetres an hour."—Aeronautics.
This is believed to be the nearest approach to "hovering" that has yet been achieved by a machine.