Sly Clown and Pantaloon!
Everyone sincerely hopes that Sir West Ridgway will make a good bag during his visit to the Moors. "Ridgway's Food" is something that can be swallowed easily, and is so palatable as to be quite a More-ish sort of dish. Good luck to the experienced and widely-travelled Sir East-and-West Ridgway. Our English Rosebery couldn't have made a better choice.
To a Brewer (by Our Christmas Clown).—"Wish you a Hoppy New Year!"
THE MAN WHO WOULD.
VI.—THE MAN WHO WOULD BE A SOUL.
Lincoln B. Swezey was a high-toned and inquiring American citizen, who came over to study our Institootions. He carried letters to almost everybody; Dukes, Radicals, Authors, eminent British Prize-fighters, Music-hall buffoons, and he prosecuted his examination steadily. He did not say much, and he never was seen to laugh, but he kept a note-book, and he seemed to contemplate in his own mind, The Ideal American, and to try to live up to that standard. When he did speak, it was in the interrogative, and he pastured his intellect on our high-class Magazines.
Lincoln B. discovered many things, and noted them down for his work on Social Dry Rot in Europe, but one matter puzzled him. He read in papers or reviews, and he vaguely heard talk of a secret institution, the Society of Souls. They were going to run a newspaper; they were not going to run a newspaper. There was a poem in connection with them, which mystified Lincoln B. Swezey not a little; he "allowed it was darned personal," but further than that his light did not penetrate. He went to a little Club, of which he was a temporary member; it was not fashionable, and did not seem to want to be, and Swezey thought it flippant. There he asked, "What are the Souls, anyhow?" "Societas omnium animarum," somebody answered, and Swezey exclaimed "Say!" "They are a congregation of ladies. Their statutes decree that they are to be bene natæ, bene vestitæ, and mediocriter,—I don't remember what."