The Independent Labour Party is not dead yet. It is forming clubs, just like any ordinary humdrum party. The Western Daily Press reports that "At a special meeting held at Lee's Coffee Tavern, Bath Bridge, last night, when there were present Mr. W. S. M. Knight, president of the Bristol South Independent Labour Party (in the chair), Messrs. A. Browne, E. B. Hack, C. Vale, C. F. Brocklehurst, T. Pole, C. Parker, and W. Price, it was unanimously decided to open a club for Totterdown and the East Ward of Bedminster in connection with the Independent Labour Party. Officers and a committee were appointed, and suitable headquarters for the club were decided upon." Nothing could be more appropriate. Totterdown suggests decrepitude and failure (in this case at least), and Bedminster hints at repose and peace. I offer the suggestion and the hint gratis to the Independent Labour Windbags.
The Loveday Street Canal Bridge (which is, I fancy, in Birmingham) is evidently a demon bridge with a depraved taste for injuring children. One day last week it threw John Chick, aged seven, off and broke one of his legs. About five hours later, resenting an attempt on the part of Thomas Walton, aged twelve, to climb it, it flung him off on to the towing-path and injured his back. A few days before that it had precipitated the same Thomas Walton into the water, whence he was rescued with some difficulty. Evidently this is a bridge with an ungovernable temper, and the authorities should guard it efficiently.
The Scotsman informs me that "speaking the other day at Haddington, Mr. Balfour glanced scathingly at those politicians of the baser sort who seek to confuse great issues by dragging to the front petty or irrelevant questions, and the breath of whose nostrils is the disturbance of the harmony which should subsist between class and class of the community." On this two questions arise. The first is how Mr. Balfour, an amiable gentleman, managed to glance scathingly. To scath, as I learn from the dictionary, means to hurt, to injure; and, personally, I cannot imagine Mr. Balfour infusing very much venom into a mere glance of his expressive eye. The second question is how politicians, even of the baser sort, can go on living when their unfortunate lungs are filled with a disturbance of harmony. That they should have sufficient strength left to drag to the front petty or irrelevant questions is nothing short of a marvel, due allowance being made for metaphors.
A golfer is in trouble, and has confided his difficulties to Golf.
Whilst playing on the links at Streetly, on July 16, he drove a ball, which apparently fell clear, but which for some time could not be found. After some little hunting it was discovered under a small tuft of heather in a lark's nest, resting on the back of a young lark, apparently about four days old, together with three lark's eggs, which were quite intact. The golfer was obliged, of course, to lift the ball and place it behind, as it would have been gross cruelty to have played it from the nest. It was match play. Under the exceptional circumstances was he bound to lose the hole? The editor replies that if a player were a stickler for the law and nothing but the law, he, of course, would be entitled to enforce it against his opponent who found the ball in the nest.