He grinned and gave a hand. I paid the greengrocer, pressed the cauliflower into the hand of the smallest boy, and drove off.... It was absurdly easy. There was no gore at all. "There!" I said to Celia when she came back. "And when that's done I'll get you some more." "Hooray! And yet," she went on, "I'm almost sorry. You see, I was working off my calls so nicely, and you'd been having some quite busy days at the office, hadn't you?" A. A. M. * * * * * [Illustration: This is not a cloak-room but the lounge of a fashionable London hotel.] * * * * * OLYMPIC TALENT. (A topical fantasy suggested by the decay of our athletic prowess and the apparent apathy of the nation as to the fate that may befall it in the international contest of 1916.) My England, so the chance has fled! Olympian years to come shall knot not The athlete's guerdon for thy head But crown the wigs of Serbs and what not. There were who sought thy shame to shield From men that mocked the sea-kings' fibres By opening funds, but these appealed To singularly few subscribers. "A trifling hundred thou.," they wrote, "To ease the joints and stiffening sockets." The public acted like a goat, They kept the cash inside their pockets. So mused I sadly; and since new Sensations oft from grief can jerk us I went to see the "Wonder Zoo," Herr HAGENBECK's surprising circus. There where the Model Homes were built That left some while ago the bard bored I watched the Nubian lions wilt In imitation lairs of cardboard. And sudden, whilst I saw them roll-- Those monster cats--beyond their ha-ha, A solace came into my soul, I murmured _sotto voce_, "Aha! "If but yon sunken fence were filled, So that these grim-faced brutes might cross it, Are there no athletes here undrilled, Veiled by their adipose deposit? "In slothful ease Britannia shirks; But haply, near these sundering ditches, Some mute inglorious miler lurks Under a morning coat and breeches. "Oh, if the gulf were bridged! What late, What all undreamed-of hurdle-winners Might blossom from a natural hate Of forming parts of feline dinners? "Yes, even I, the motley fool, Starting from scratch and willy nilly Might prove it needs no Yankee school To knock the level hundred silly. "The gymnast's art should all be mine As, clambering from the scene of pillage, I roosted safe in yon red pine (Left over from the Russian village). "Ay, and if all old tales are wrong And lions climb--from that asylum I should come out extremely, strong, Using my brolly for a pilum." Evoe. * * * * * THE INDOMITABLES. There is trouble ahead for some of our Peers. I have just come across three fore-warnings of it. The first was in the train. A fat man was telling his grievance to a thin man.