Glass is an invisible substance made in some mysterious way. It is used for a multiplicity of things, but principally for windows and bottles. It is when used for windows that its special quality of transparency comes in so happily, for it enables you to see through. This, when it is the window of a hat shop and you are out with your wife or fiancée, is not an unmixed blessing, but at other times it can be very convenient. Thus, when looking through the window, oneself being carefully concealed behind the blind, one can see undesirable callers approaching and beat a safe retreat. Windows can also be shut, both in houses and railway carriages, and thus keep the place warm and pleasantly insanitary and comfortable. It has been said that the pure air of many German towns is due to the fact that the Germans keep their windows shut. Glass is also used for the chimneys of lamps, which, when the wick is turned up too high, as it usually is, break. It is employed furthermore in the manufacture of glass eyes, which, as all who have visited _A Kiss for Cinderella_ know, do not always match the real ones. But the best thing that glass does is to become bottles. Bottles are of two kinds: one kind for medicine, and the less said about those the better; and the other for wine. It was a happy thought which substituted glass for the skin and leather of which earlier bottles were made, for one can now see, by holding it to the light, how little the bottle contains, and order another. The principal fault of bottles is that they are rarely big enough. A half-bottle does not contain sufficient for one, and a whole bottle rarely satisfies two. Some men are so lost to shame as to set only one bottle of wine before three or even four persons. Before the War old bottles were used chiefly as targets in rifle saloons. Now that they have become scarce, and targets are made in Germany, they are worth money and should be carefully saved. Glass is useful also for making glasses--the receptacles from which wine is drunk. Without glasses we should be hard put to it to consume our liquor and should have to resort to half-cocoanuts, cups, the hollow of the hand, or even sponges. Just at the moment bottles--I mean the more genial variety--are under a cloud. It is a penal offence to sell a bottle before noon, between half-past two and half-past six, and after half-past nine at night. But they are expected to come to their own again when Peace is celebrated. I think that is all. Yours, etc., FIRST AID. * * * * * [Illustration: _Niece._ "HURRAH, AUNTIE! TED HAS BEEN MADE A LANCE-CORPORAL!" _Auntie._ "I DO WISH TED WOULD BE CONTENT WITH BEING A SOLDIER, AND NOT GO IN FOR THESE FORMS OF NOTORIETY."] * * * * * NURSERY RHYMES OF LONDON TOWN. XIX.--HAYMARKET.