QUEER QUERIES.
A Municipal Hall.—I see the County Council are thinking of spending nearly a million of the ratepayers' money in buying a site for a municipal palace in Parliament Street, because the members—pending the time when they are all elected to the Legislature—want to be as close to it as possible. Why not let them be still closer, in Westminster Hall itself, which is now untenanted? Or if the members don't like that, why not make a working arrangement with the House of Commons to use that chamber in the mornings before the M.P.'s come down to it? This would be something like an "in-and-out" clause, and would save no end of money.
True Economist.
Rewards to Raconteurs.—I am considered a first-rate storyteller and conversationalist; indeed, few dinner parties (at Lower Tooting) can get on without me. Do you think I could get elected to the Reform Club without paying the entrance subscription? I see that some members of that club have been left £2000 each as a reward for "brightening the evenings" of a deceased member, and I feel certain that had the testator known me, he would have increased my legacy to £4000 at least. My sparkling powers of conversation are often called a "gift," but I don't want them to be a gift if I could get anything for them.
Sydney Macaulay Hayward Smith.
Present! Fire! Bang-Kok!—"Three Frenchmen killed, two wounded; twenty Siamese killed, and twelve wounded,"—such is the first result of French Humann-ising influence in Siam.