TRIFLES LIGHT AS HAIR.
However much Kentish farmers may grumble about the agricultural outlook, their strop-and-razor colleagues, the barbers of that county, should now replace any grief in which they also may be indulging in reference to their industry, with great gaiety, for there is every prospect of a long and prosperous run of hirsute harvests. The High Constable has decreed that, unless his men can grow "well regulated beards or military moustaches," they are to be clean-shaven. Farewell the festive "mutton-chop" whisker and the jovial goatee! Henceforth "Bobby" will be beardless, and as he drinks the mid-day pint of that frothing beverage whose main ingredient—more or less—is malt, the upper-lip hops-tacle, upon which the foam was wont to find a brief resting-place, will be conspicuous by its absence—not lost exactly, but s(h)aved before.
ROUNDABOUT READINGS.
President Andrews, of Brown University, has contributed to the North American Review an article entitled "Are there Too Many of Us?" Personally, I should answer with an unhesitating yes, especially after Bank Holidays, or fêtes and galas such as those with which the provinces teem. And it may be noted, by the way, as a curious fact in the natural history of amusements, that no genuine fête is ever found without a gala. Conversely a gala without a fête cannot be imagined. From the presence in your neighbourhood of one of the two you are at once entitled to infer the presence of the other.
I return, however, to Professor Andrews. He proves by a series of elaborate and convincing calculations that if the world started with a population of two, the increase in 3,000 years would have become "two quintillion human beings; viz., to every square yard 3,333⅓ persons. Or the earth would be covered with men in columns of 833⅓ each, standing on each others heads. If they averaged five feet tall, each column would be 4,166⅔ feet high."