Stalks and shoots, climbs in boots Like a navvy's not a dandy's, Ice-axe takes, records breaks-- If not neck--on Alps or Andes. Alps in height, girls affright Men, like me, of puny figure; They are too tall, but you Are preposterously bigger. At this dance, if I glance Round the room, I see I'm smallest; You instead are a head Over girls and men, you're tallest. As a pair, at a fair, Any showman might produce us; Dwarf I'd do, giant you---- What! They want to introduce us? Can I whirl such a girl? Calisthenics could not teach it. I, effaced, clasp your waist? I'll be hanged if I can reach it! [Illustration: THE STORMY PETREL!] * * * * * THE ADVENTURES OF PICKLOCK HOLES. (_By Cunnin Toil._) No. I.--THE BISHOP'S CRIME. I was sitting alone in my room at 10.29 on the night of the 14th of last November. I had been doing a good deal of work lately, and I was tired. Moreover, I had had more than one touch of that old Afghan fever, which always seemed to be much more inclined to touch than to go. However, we can't have everything here to please us; and as I had only the other day attended two bankers and a Lord Mayor for measles, I had no real cause to complain of my prospects. I had drawn the old armchair in which I was sitting close to the fire, and, not having any bread handy, I was occupied in toasting my feet at the blaze when suddenly the clock on the mantelpiece struck the half hour, and PICKLOCK HOLES stood by my side. I was too much accustomed to his proceedings to express any surprise at seeing him thus, but I own that I was itching to ask him how he had managed to get into my house without ringing the bell. However, I refrained, and motioned him to a chair. "My friend," said this extraordinary man, without the least preface, "you've been smoking again. You know you have; it's not the least use denying it." I absolutely gasped with astonishment, and gazed at him almost in terror. How had he guessed my secret? He read my thoughts, and smiled. "Oh, simply enough. That spot on your shirt-cuff is black. But it might have been yellow, or green, or blue, or brown, or rainbow-coloured. But I know you smoke Rainbow mixture, and as your canary there in the corner has just gone blind, I know further that bird's-eye is one of the component parts of the mixture." "HOLES," I cried, dropping my old meerschaum out of my mouth in my amazement; "I don't believe you're a man at all--you're a devil." "Thank you for the compliment," he replied, without moving a single muscle of his marble face. "You ought not to sup----" He was going to have added "pose," but the first syllable seemed to suggest a new train of thought (in which, I may add, there was no second class whatever) to my inexplicable friend.