UNLUCKY SPEECHES.
"Wouldn't you like some Music, Professor?"
"No, thanks. I'm quite happy as I am. To tell you the truth, I prefer the worst possible Conversation to the best Music there is!"
LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI.
A Ballad of Bird Slaughter.
(With Apologies to the Shade of Keats.)
"The new style of women's head-gear—called mixed plumes—threatens to add the extermination of Birds of Paradise to that of several species of herons.... It is for this 'use' that whole heronries in Florida and elsewhere have been utterly destroyed; it is for this that Birds of Paradise are being persecuted even to extinction."—Mrs. E. Phillips, Vice-President of the Society for the Preservation of Birds.
I.