Addressed to a Lady who has asked for it.
Of old, when in the dance's-whirl
Or crouched behind a friendly screen
I fell in love with any girl
(You know the kind of love I mean),
I gave the credit to champagne—
And breathed again.
When first we met, a more intense
Emotion stirred me, I admit,
But having dined at great expense
I didn't like to mention it,
For tribute seemed to Bacchus due
As much as you.
But love that made a parish hop
A sacred feast for both of us
Burst into flame without a drop
Of alcoholic stimulus;
And love that thrives on lemonade
Can never fade.
REVERSIBLE RHETORIC.
(Being the unsigned MS., evidently of a leading article, picked up in Fleet Street last week. What the finder wants to know is—which side is it arguing for?)
The Plot that Failed.
Out of the welter of mendacity, evasions and intrigue, for a parallel to which the records of this or indeed of any civilised country might be searched in vain, one fact has at last emerged clear and indisputable. The nation will learn this morning, with what feelings it is only too easy to conjecture, that a great party, a party which, despite its many political blunders, has at least a record for honourable if mistaken statesmanship in the past, has now stooped to the final and abysmal folly. Disguise the fact with what specious rhetoric they may, the truth remains that our opponents have deliberately endeavoured to tamper with a great national possession, and to make the British Army a tool in the game of party.
Incredible, nay unthinkable, as such a situation would have been till lately, who is now to deny it? If any doubt still remained, surely the venomous outpourings of those journals which support and encourage the machinations of "honourable gentlemen"—alas that the phrase should henceforth have to be in quotation marks!—on the opposite side of the House must by now have dispelled it. Beaten to their last ditch, and discredited even in that, it is now evident that the conspirators had determined to stake all upon one final throw. Fortunately the very desperateness of the plot has proved its undoing, and from the tremulous lips of the perpetrators themselves comes to-day a froth of vituperation and rancorous abuse that is the surest confession of abject failure.