_Last Difficulty, I hope._--After treating the button with suppressed emotion, dash at the white tie. I find myself asking myself, "Why the washerwoman _will_ fold it all wrong, and starch it so that the slightest crinkle shows?" I have no answer. Of course at any other moment I could tie it at once, and have done with it; but now first one end's too long, then the other end's too short; then, on the third trial, the middle part somehow gets hopelessly tucked into itself, and I am pulling at it, by mistake, for one of the ends. At last I get it something like all right, but not everything that could be desired. Waistcoat. Coat. Handkerchief! Where's handkerchief? Where is--... ha! Down-stairs. Everybody waiting, evidently. Apology. "Ah!" says PENDELL, "um--ah--now you've come, we'll--um----" and rings the bell. I recognise some of our companions out otter-hunting to-day. Galaxy, too, of Cornish beauty, which means the darkest, brightest eyes and the clearest, freshest complexions. Not being introduced, I look about for Old RUDDOCK. There is an elderly gentleman sitting at a table looking over a photograph book. This is the nearest approach to Old RUDDOCK that I can see. Dinner announced. I take in MISS BODD, of Popthlanack, and follow the TRELISSACS, the TREGONIES of Tregivel, and MAJOR PENOLVER, with MRS. SOMEBODY of Somewhere. Whom RUDDOCK takes, I don't know. _A Discovery._--I am seated next to Old RUDDOCK of Ruddock, at dinner. PENDELL introduces us. A hale, hearty, elderly gentleman, with, if any expression at all, rather a sleepy one, as if a very little over-feeding would send him into a doze. Now then for a "Nicht wi' RUDDOCK!" * * * * * [Illustration: AMBITION. _Mr. Tittups (suggesting impossible Bank to full-sized Nimrod)._ "DON'T YOU THINK WE COULD HAVE IT HERE, SIR?"] * * * * * POETRY OF FACT. AT the festive season of the year particularly, people commonly complain that the newspapers are dull. Unless in exceptional years, nothing happens of which the narration is in anywise interesting, and the dearth of news is generally so extreme that journalists are actually driven to fill their columns with theological controversies. The dryness of grammatical details has been surmounted by the device of putting them into metre, as in the _As in Præsenti_ and the _Propria quæ Maribus_ of the Eton Latin Grammar. Might not the contents of the Journals, in like sort, be rendered somewhat less prosy than they sometimes are by being versified? The telegrams would, perhaps, be peculiarly susceptible of this treatment, whereunto they seem to lend themselves in virtue of their characteristic conciseness, which it would enhance. The electric wire on New Year's Day transmitted a certain message from Rome. Here it is in the form of blank verse:--