"THE PITY O' IT!"
"Well, Simpson, how do you like the Hot Weather?"
"Can't stand it, Sir! It's hawful! Ain't got no Stomach for my victuals, Sir!"
Goose and Gander.—A sapient Somebody (or Nobody) modestly proposes that, in taking a poll for a Free Library, everybody who does not take the trouble to register his vote at all shall be counted as if he had voted against the proposal! Well, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Suppose that all who don't take the trouble to vote should be counted as voting for the proposal. There's at least as much to be said for that as for the opposite plan.
ROUNDABOUT READINGS.
Ostend must be a glorious place. From an advertisement which has appeared in an evening contemporary I gather that "the multitude, anxious to spend an elegant and fashionable sojourn in the country, has rendered itself this year at Ostend. It is a long time since such an opulent clientèle has been united in a seaside resort. At the fall of day the vast terraces of the fashionable restaurants, situated along the sea-bank, present a fairy aspect. There is quite a confusion of dazzling costumes upon which sparkle thousand gems, and all this handsome cosmopolitan society passes through the saloons of the Kursaal Club, in which one hears spoken all known languages as at Babel and Monte Carlo, and of which the attractions are identical to those of the latter place." This is the first time I have heard of a similarity to Babel being mentioned as an attraction. But no doubt an opulent clientèle has peculiar tastes of its own, especially when its dazzling costumes sparkle with thousand gems.