[Illustration: UNLIKELY SCENE AT THE LABOUR EXCHANGE: OUT-OF-WORK POET PASSING THE INSPIRATION TEST BEFORE A SUPERVISING OFFICIAL OF THE BOARD OF TRADE.] * * * * * "Young lady requires daily work as Cook-general; work not objected to." _Provincial Paper._ Very obliging of her. * * * * * POSSESSION. The dear old home has been let to strangers. An interloper occupies the messuage. A foreign master controls the demesne. To-day especially, when as I write the air is balmy and the skies are blue, it is agonising to feel that our own spring rhubarb is growing crimson only to be toyed with by alien lips, and that the thrush on our pear-tree bough----But no, I am wrong; the pear-tree bough is in the garden of No. 9; it is only the trunk that stands in the garden of No. 10. That, by the way, is an accident that frequently occurs to estate-owners. Consider critically for a moment those well-known lines in which BROWNING says-- "Hark where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field," and then goes on to speak of "the wise thrush" on "the bent spray's edge" as "singing his song twice over." It is pretty obvious that the reason the poet assigns to this action on the bird's part is not the correct one. Evidently the part of the tree on which it was sitting was on the other side of the hedge in the next-door fellow's garden, and it was conscientiously trying to allot one performance to each of the two rival householders. But I seem to have wandered a little from the ancient home. Come with me in imagination, reader, and let us have a look at it together. The fourth house to the left in this winding road that fringes the common, you see it standing there gazing a little wistfully, yet with a quiet air of semi-detachment, out over the wide expanse of green. Half right and half left are two monstrous blocks of red brick flats overlooking it with a thousand envious eyes. The middle distance is dotted pleasantly with hawthorn bushes and the pretty pieces of sandwich-paper that are always the harbingers of London's Spring. Beyond these things, and far away to the front, you may detect on clear days a white church-tower nestling like Swiss milk amongst immemorial trees. And this view is mine--mine, like the old home. If we linger for a moment in the road we shall probably see the scornful face of the proud usurper at one of the windows calmly enjoying this view of mine, all unconscious that I, the rightful owner, am standing beneath. Does it not remind you of the films?-- "_Charles Carruthers_, an outcast from his ancestral halls, eyes mournfully the scene of merry junketing within. _Charles Carruthers_--_blick! blick!_"--and you see him eyeing mournfully outside--"_blick! blick!_"--and you see the junketers eating his junket within.