Sympathy.
"Yes, Toby," he said, in reply to sympathetic greeting, "I am a little hipped; situation growing too heavy for me. Patriotism all very well; public spirit desirable; self-abnegation, as Old Morality says, is the seed of virtue. But you may carry spirit of self-sacrifice too far. Read my speech at dinner to Hartington, of course? Put it in the right light, don't you think? We Dissentient Liberals, as they call us, are the Paschal Lambs of politics; except that, instead of being offered up as sacrifice, we offer up ourselves. Still there are degrees. Hartington given up something; Chamberlain chucked himself away; James might have been on the Woolsack. But think of me, dear Toby, and all I've sacrificed. Four years ago a private Member, adrift from my Party; no chance of reinstatement; not even sure of a seat. Now Chancellor of the Exchequer, with £5000 a-year, and a pick of safe seats. Too much to expect of me, Toby; sometimes more than I can bear;" and Jokim hid his face in his copy of the Orders of the Day, whilst Theodore Fry looking on, was dissolved in tears.
Business done.—Supply.
Complaints are often made as to the non-appreciation of jokes by those to whom they are addressed. A Correspondent sends us on this subject the following interesting remarks:—"I have made on an average ten jokes a day for the last six years. Being in possession of a large independent income, I could have afforded to make more, but I think ten a day a reasonable number. I find that, as a rule, the wealthy and highly-placed have absolutely no appreciation of humour. The necessitous, however, show a keen taste for it. The other day a gentleman, whom I had only seen once, asked me for the loan of a sovereign. I immediately made six jokes running, and was rewarded by six successive peals of laughter. I then informed him I had no money with me, and left him chuckling to himself something about an Eastern coin of small value, called, I believe, a dam."
Narrow Escape of an R.A.!—Everyone knows that a Critic is one, who would, professionally, roast and cut up his own father; but that some Critics go beyond this, may be gathered from the fact of the Art-Critic of the Observer, in one of his recent reviews of the Academy, having thus expressed himself:—
"Mr. Poynter's flesh is never quite to our liking,"——
Heavens! What a dainty cannibal is this Critic! But how lucky for Mr. Poynter.
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