What dooms all these birds to perish, What sends forth these men to kill, Who can have the hearts that cherish Such designs of doing ill? Sad the answer: English ladies Send those men, to gain each day What for matron and for maid is All the Fashion, so folks say. Feathers deck the hat and bonnet. Though the plumage seemeth fair, _Punch_, whene'er he looks upon it, Sees that slaughter in the air. Many a fashion gives employment Unto thousands needing bread, This, to add to your enjoyment, Means the dying and the dead. Wear the hat, then, _sans_ the feather, English women, kind and true; Birds enjoy the summer weather And the sea as much as you. There's the riband, silk, or jewel, Fashion's whims are oft absurd; This is execrably cruel; Leave his feathers to the bird! * * * * * ROBERT AT MARLOW. "HERE we are again!" as the Clown says in the Pantermine, at butiful Great Marlow, looking jest as bootiful as ever, though there is jest a few tears a falling from the dark clowds coz the sun doesn't shine as it did when we was in grand old Lundon last week, and turn all the drops of rain into reel dimons. My son WILLIAM has cum with us, and he says as how this lovely place makes quite a Poet of him, so he dashed off the following description of it larst nite when the rain was a coming down in palefuls, witch we all thinks to be amost as butiful as it's trew:-- "To Marlow have we come, a little city, Famous for pretty girls and boating, he Who has not seen it, will be much to pity, So says King ROBERT, and I quite agree Of all the towns on Thames there's none more pretty, Pangbourne perhaps, but that you soon may see. Our nice clean lodging's near the flowing river, A noble stream, much like the Guadalquiver." I haven't corrected none of his rayther rum spelling, but writ it down jest as he wrote it all out of his hone hed. Not having ever herd of the place that he says the River is like, I natrally arsked him where it were, and he said in Sow Ameriky. What it is to be not only a Poet but a geolergist as well! ah, it's all owing to the Bellowsmender's Skool. I don't find much difference in the old Place xcep that it's gitting bigger, witch it's a pity, but how can one be surprized. If peeple finds out a perfec pairodice they natrally tells their friends of it, and so more cums ewery year. Among others we've got a real live Hem Pea, but he's here on the sly, having told the Tory Whip as he's bin obligated to go to Swizzerland to see his pore sick Mother-in-Law! A nice sort of green Whip he must ha' bin to be so eesily gammond. His wally told me as he had shaved off his beard so nobody knowed him, but for fear of accidence he passes ewery Satterday and Sunday at a farm yard inland. Wot a lively life for a reel Swell!