"If I was to be so soon done for I wonder what I was began for." * * * * * [Illustration: _Ingenuous Maiden (on being told she is expected to milk the cow_). "Oh, Mum, I dursn't without a soldier held her head."] * * * * * "The Austrians thrice attempted to rush the Italian positions on the Upper Isonzo, but were repulsed with heavy lasses." _Times of Ceylon._ Stout girls, these _contadine_. * * * * * "Recently I have seen several German planes so high as to be mere specks, and of the many I have seen none has been lower, I should say, than ,000 ft."--_Morning Paper._ A cautious statement, and probably true. * * * * * "We are glad to learn that the daughter of our popular banker was married on the 10th instant, over 1000 persons were invited and sumpfedtuously."--_Indian Paper._ We infer that the compositor was among them. * * * * * "In his defence Mr. ---- said he had endeavoured to fake the point that the onus of proving he was under the Military Service Act was upon the prosecution." _Bayswater Chronicle._ If not a conscientious he seems to have been at least a candid objector. * * * * * "THE BIRTH OF A FLUENCE." In consequence of the new tax on imported films the Cinema industry in England has received a new fillip, and a wave of enterprise is passing over the studios. In place of the familiar--almost too familiar-- American dramas we are to have English. No more of those square-jawed stern American business men at their desks, with the telephone ever in their hands and instantaneous replies to every call. No more police officers, also at their desks, giving orders like lightning and having them understood and acted upon as quickly. No more crooks clambering over the roofs of an express train. No more motor-car pursuits. No more Indians, no more cowboys, no more heroines in top boots. And what is there to be instead? Not--I hear you cry appealingly--not panoramas of Zurich or Cape Town? No, not those devastating views of scenery, but home-made films "featuring" English performers, with an eye not only to entertainment but instruction. That is the new movie note. And for a start a wonderful picture has just been completed, under the title "The Birth of a Fluence," taking the Cinema-goers (as they are called) behind the scenes of a London daily paper. Not a real paper, of course, for that would be telling too much, but an absolutely imaginary paper, yet like enough in many respects to a real paper to afford to the imaginative spectator an idea of how such marvellous sheets are put together. No expense has been spared to get an air of verisimilitude into these pictures, at a private view of which we were permitted to be present.