[Illustration: A BUSINESS ANNOUNCEMENT.] * * * * * TRADE BETRAYED. _Returned Anglo-Indian Colonel_ (_to friend of his boyhood_). Either your climate is colder than it used to be, or your coals throw out less heat. Which is it? _His Friend._ Oh, it's the coals. Rubbishy things, rather. Come from Tomsk in Siberia. _R. A.-I. C._ Siberia! They ought to be sent there! But aren't English coals good enough? _His Friend._ Oh, yes, they're _good_ enough. But then, you see, they're dear. That's the result of the last coal strike. _R. A.-I. C._ Oh, I heard about that at Bangalore. Then how about your razors? I bought one yesterday in the Strand. If you believe me, I've only used it once and it's blunt already. _His Friend._ "Made in Germany," no doubt. The trade's gone over there, they say. _R. A.-I. C._ And boots, now. Why has the pair I got in the City a month ago split open in two places? _His Friend._ _That's_ the late boot strike. Cheap American goods have ousted the genuine British article. _R. A.-I. C._ (_meditatively_). Ah--heard of the boot strike too at Bangalore. But I didn't find my bootmaker charged me any less than in the old days for 'em. Tell you what, there's only one thing that will save England. _His Friend._ What's that? _R. A.-I. C._ Why, a new kind of strike altogether. Why shouldn't the strikers _strike striking?_ Eh? _His Friend._ That never struck me. [_They part pensively._ * * * * * MY PIPE. I do not now attempt to sing, With laudatory phrases, That now, in verse, quite hackneyed thing, Which poet, painter praises: Beloved by TURNER, CLAUDE, or CUYP, The excellent tobacco-pipe. Nor yet of bagpipes do I write, Pan's pipes with Punch and Judy, Or organ ones, because you might Read books on them, from MUDIE, In varied tongues, in varied type-- On any sort of music pipe. Nor, plagued of late however much By bronchial affections, Do I propose just now to touch, With medical reflections, On what Jack Frost delights to gripe, My choking, wheezing, sore wind-pipe, Nor am I speaking now of wine, Nor yet, from MARRYAT learning, Of what the Cockney would define-- Poor A as ever spurning-- "The sime in nime, but not in shipe," The pipe of port; the boatswain's pipe. No! Now I sing--but not with praise, To praise it would be rummer Than any other sort of craze, Excepting in a plumber; I am not such a fool, a "snipe," As says the Bard--my water-pipe. For weeks I could not get a drop Of water, it was frozen; When thus congealed the thing would stop, I spoke as would a boatswain. For seamen's oaths the time was ripe, I here translate them--Hang that pipe!