They are looking for love's playtime, and the merry, merry May-time, And the popular R.A. time, and the whole tohu-bohu! Bring the girls delights as dowry, may their social paths be flowery, And your silver drops the only tears they need to look upon. So they're wholesome, may they flourish; and may all Spring influence nourish True manhood and pure womanhood, and--there, my preaching's done! We need a true _Spring Clean_, sweet. Give us parks and gardens green, sweet. And laughter, like your bird-songs pure, un-satyr-like, though clever, Bless our boys, our girls, our babies, yes--_and bring us back our JABEZ_, And we'll pardon your delay, and say 'tis better late than never! * * * * * OPPORTUNITY LOST BY MR. JUSTICE HAWKINS DURING A RECENT CASE WHEN HIS LORDSHIP MIGHT HAVE PUT IT TO THE JURY.--"Gentlemen, what is the difference, or, as there has been no quarrel, let us say what is the distinction between a costumier and a butcher anxious to arrange his shop-front to the best advantage? Gentlemen, I will not detain you, it is this: The costumier meets out the dresses; the butcher 'dresses out' the meats. Gentlemen, you are discharged." * * * * * TO CHARITABLE CHESS-PLAYERS.--A good move at Easter time is--"cheque to his Bishop." * * * * * BLIND ALLEY-GORIES. BY DUNNO WÄHRIAR. (_Translated from the original Lappish by Mr. Punch's own Hyperborean Enthusiast._) INTRODUCTORY NOTE. IT affords me no ordinary gratification to be the humble instrument in rendering these exquisitely obscure prose-poems--reeking as they are with the self-consciousness of so magnificently triumphant an Ego--into the English tongue, though I am fully aware of the difficulty of preserving all the mystical unintelligibility of the original. DUNNO WÄHRIAR is perhaps the most remarkable personality that his native Lapland has yet produced. He first saw the light on April 1, 1879, at Kandalax, so that he may still be called comparatively young. His impressionable, sensitive soul broke out in early revolt against the train-oil and tallow which formed the traditionary nutriment of his family circle, and in 1883 we find him casting off the shackles of conventionality and escaping to Sweden in his sledge-perambulator. There he has lived ever since, and has already secured a foremost place among the greatest physiological psychologists of Scandinavia. As a morbid pathologist, he surpasses STRINDBERG; while in neurotic sensitivism, he has hustled HANSSON into a back seat; easily beaten BJÖRNSON in diagnosis of the elusive emotions; and taken the indigestible cake of slack-baked symbolism from the master hand of IBSEN himself! Small wonder, then, that the commonest penwiper containing issues from his pen is eagerly sought after by admirers of such effusions.