What are these hideous crimes that I have done, mistaking them for mercy? How unworthy am I to touch so sweet an attribute, distorting and most basely turning it from its appointed course! There chime the bells. Let them proclaim how, in the coming year they usher in, I will essay to win this fair, sweet attribute entrusted to me, and so misshapen by my cruelties, back to her rightful form! I will begin by showing mercy unto Mercy's self. * * * * * A STUDY IN BROWN. I've caught you, hazel-eyed brunette, day-dreaming, chin on hand! Don't think, now, that my stolen sketch is bold and contraband! Nay, rather, 'tis the _duty_ that's imposed on ev'ry beauty, To grant that with respectful glance her profile may be scanned. To picture such a wealth of brown would VANDYCK'S self delight; Brown eyes I see, and waving hair, brown as a summer night. _I_ cannot do you justice, but this thumb-nail sketch, I trust, is A deep brown-study rendered into simple black and white. In reverie reflective, has your wayward fancy strayed, It may be, to last summer's tryst in some wild English glade, Or old-world forest-garden, where, like _Rosalind_ in Arden, Your troth you plighted, or, love-lorn, outmourned the Nut-brown Maid? [Illustration] You're wand'ring in Mahatma-land, and counting astral sheep? And gathering wool that never grew, a Brownie-led _Bo-peep_, Or, possibly, pursuant of an Ego playing truant. And lost amid the labyrinth of dim hypnotic sleep? For all I know, you're musing in this meditative trance On modern and sublunar joys, as dinner, dress, and dance! Or is it _toothache_ merely that--well, makes you stare so queerly? (Somehow I ne'er _can_ draw the line 'twixt bathos and romance!) If thus I seem inquisitive, don't kill me with a frown! Though times are hard, in vulgar phrase, I'll plank my money down! Your train of thought to share (if you'll accept a penny-tariff), I tender, with my compliments, the coin that's called a "brown"! * * * * * PRODIGIOUS! TO MR. PUNCH,--Sir,--I appeal to you. Ought scientific papers to be allowed to publish incitements to bloodshed and anarchy? I have just read in one an enthusiastic commendation of "an agitator working at 280 revolutions per minute." This agitator is, it appears, closely connected with an "annihilator." It is true that the annihilator is a smoke-annihilator, and the agitator is part of its machinery; but who knows what influence may be exerted upon weak minds at such a time as this by the use of these awful terms? Is the Home Secretary asleep? Yours, A PATRIOT. * * * * *