To-morrow we break up, and I join the army. The army has gone away somewhere while I wasn't looking, and I shall have to make inquiries about it. You never can tell what these things will do when not kept under the strictest observation. My bit _may_ have gone to Egypt or Nyassaland or Nagri Sembilan. But I have a depressing feeling that A 27 _x y z_ iv. 9.8 will be nearer the mark, and that I shall find it meandering nightly to Bk 171 in large droves, there to insert more and more humps of soggy Belgium into more and more sandbags. I don't want to make myself unpleasant to the War Office, but I really can't see why we haven't once and for all built trenches all done up in eight-inch thick steel plates. They could easily be brought up ready-made, and simply sunk into position. They would sink all right; you'd just have to put them down anywhere and look the other way for a minute. The difficulty would be to stop the lift before it got to the basement--if there is a basement in Flanders. There is a tragedy to report. We were adopted recently by a magpie. He was a gentle creature of impulsive habits and strong woodpecking instincts. Arsene we called him. For some days he gladdened us with his soft bright eye. But when we came to know him well and I relied on him to break the shells of my eggs every morning at breakfast, to steal my pens and spill my ink, to wake me by a gentle nip on the nose from his firm but courteous beak, a rough grenadier came one day to explain a new type of infernal machine, and, when we went out, left a detonator on the table. I never saw what actually followed, but we buried Arsene with full military honours. * * * * * "Ladies' Self-trimmed Velvet Hate for One Shilling."--_North-Country Paper._ The latest fashion in Berlin. * * * * * MORE LIGHT FROM OUR LEADERS. By way of a supplement to the Candle-shade epigrams recently contributed by various distinguished men and women of light and leading, we have been fortunate to secure the following sentiments for St. Valentine's Day from several luminaries who were conspicuously absent from the list. Mr. Harry Lauder, the illustrious comedian, poetizes as follows:-- "Let those wha wull compile the nation's annals, And guide oor thochts in strict historic channels; Ma Muse prefers, far fra these dull morasses, To laud the purrrple heather and the lassies." Mr. Stevenson, the incomparable cueist, sends this pithy distich:-- "Big guns are useful in their way, 'tis true, But nursery cannons have their uses too." Miss Carrie Tubb, the famous soprano, writes:-- "Butt me no butts. Though carping critics flout us, What would Diogenes have done without us?" A distinguished actor gives as his favourite quotation the couplet from Goldsmith:-- "A man he was financially unique, And passing poor on forty pounds a week."