Cordiality before Party. The circumstance of Mr. Lulu Harcourt's unveiling a memorial to Mr. Joseph Chamberlain and Mr. Austen Chamberlain at the Albert Dock Hospital is not without precedent. On more than one occasion party differences have been similarly forgotten. Thus several golf-players contributed to _The Daily Telegraph_ shilling fund in honour of the great W. G. Grace some few years ago. Such sinking of private shibboleths is a very excellent thing and goes far to show how thoroughly sound and healthy English public life really is _au fond_. The Names of Colleges. Exeter College, Oxford, which has just celebrated its six hundredth anniversary, is not the only college which bears the same name as that of a city. Pembroke is another. Keble is, of course, named after the hymn-writer and divine; and Balliol, where C. S. C. played the wag so divertingly, after Balliol. _A propos_ of Oxford, it is a question whether that extremely amusing book, _Verdant Green_, is still much read by freshers. The Author of _The Little Minister._ Sir James Barrie, who is said to have written a revue for production this autumn at a West-End Theatre, must not be confounded with the French sculptor, Barye, in spite of the similarity of name. Barye is famous chiefly for his bronzes of lions; and fortunately, in making his studies of these dangerous animals, he escaped the fate which so often befalls the trainer of wild beasts whose animals suddenly turn upon him. * * * * * ONCE UPON A TIME. The Alien. Once upon a time a poet was sitting at his desk in his cottage near the woods, trying to write. It was a hot summer day and great fat white clouds were sailing across the sky. He knew that he ought to be out, but still he sat on, pen in hand, trying to write. Suddenly, among all the other sounds of busy urgent life that were filling the warm sweet air, he heard the new and unaccustomed song of a bird. At least not new and not unaccustomed, but new and unaccustomed there, in this sylvan retreat. The notes poured out, now shrill, now mellow, now bubbling like musical water, but always rich with the joy of life, the fulness of happiness. Where had he heard it before? What bird could it be? Suddenly the poet's housekeeper hurried in. "Oh, Sir," she exclaimed, "isn't it a pity? Someone's canary has got free, and it's singing out here something beautiful." "Of course," said the poet--"a canary;" and he hastened out to see it. But before he could get there the bird had flown to a clump of elms a little way off, from which proceeded sweeter and more tumultuously exultant song than they had ever known. The poet walked to the elms with his field-glasses, and after a while he discerned among the million leaves, the little yellow bird, with its throat trembling with rapture. But the poet and his housekeeper were not the only creatures who had heard the strange melody. "I say," said one sparrow to another, "did you hear that?"