_Lord Illingworth._ Reach me the matches, like a good boy--thanks. Now--define these cigarettes--as tobacco. _Lord Goring._ My dear GEORGE, they are atrocious. And they leave me unsatisfied. _Lord Illingworth._ You are a promising disciple of mine. The only use of a disciple is that at the moment of one's triumph he stands behind one's chair and shouts that after all he is immortal. _Lord Goring._ You are quite right. It is as well, too, to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be learnt. _Lord Illingworth._ Certainly, and ugliness is the root of all industry. _Lord Goring._ GEORGE, your conversation is delightful, but your views are terribly unsound. You are always saying insincere things. _Lord Illingworth._ If one tells the truth, one is sure sooner or later to be found out. _Lord Goring._ Perhaps. The sky is like a hard hollow sapphire. It is too late to sleep. I shall go down to Covent Garden and look at the roses. Good-night, GEORGE! I have had such a pleasant evening! * * * * * DEATH IN THE CUP. ["The social duty of paying calls, refreshed, as it necessarily is, by frequent cups of tepid tea, is apparently little better than a process of slow poisoning."--_Daily Graphic._] Oh, here's a pretty state of things! Whenever you go calling, And take this deadly liquor and imbibe it without stint, You're certainly preparing a catastrophe appalling, Your mirth is as the little lamb's, unmindful of the mint. And when your entertainer, who seems so sweetly placid And quite unlike a criminal, suggests "Another cup?" She might as well be offering a dose of prussic acid, And the Public Prosecutor ought to take the matter up! "The cup that cheers"--that hackneyed phrase is frightfully in error, If seldom it "inebriates" (it _does_, the doctors plead), There lurks within its fatal draught a more efficient terror, 'Twill shortly make a funeral your one and only need! So since a daily cup or two the thin end of the wedge is, And since this revelation of our danger has been made, We all will wear red ribbons and will sign the strictest pledges, And speedily inaugurate an "Anti-Tea" crusade. A word to you, AMANDA mine. Unless your cruel kindness, Your efforts to consign me to an early grave, shall cease, And if you dare, presuming on my long-continued blindness, To offer me a cup of tea--I'll send for the police! [Illustration: "A word to you, Amanda mine!"] * * * * * THE TIME OF DAY.--Good, after NEWNES to find the style "Bart." The bestowal of the baronetcy quite a Tit-Bit for the Strand. But there is no truth in the report that the event will be followed by the establishment of a new morning paper to be called _The Dragon_, and edited by Sir GEORGE. * * * * * THE CHRONICLES OF A RURAL PARISH. IX.--OF COAL.