Though her charming little nose is, you confess, a trifle flat, When the lips are red as roses, who would stop to think of that? Sunny smiles so sweet and simple, scornful cynic soul might win, While a most bewitching dimple guards the fascinating chin. Teeth the purest pearl outshining, shell-pink nails, and she will wear Just one red camellia twining in her ebon wealth of hair. Jet looks grey beside her tresses blacker than the murk midnight, While the little hand that presses each coquettish curl shines white. She is quite an _avis rara_, but her lips for me were dumb, Though she murmured, "_Sayonara_," and again should bid me come. If her fairy ears I frighten with the wild words of the West, Surely love will come to lighten all the burden of my breast. I will learn her awful lingo, if by any chance I can; I'll despoil the gay flamingo to provide her with a fan. She will note my admiration, smiling in a sweet surprise, And there _can_ be conversation lovers learn 'twixt eyes and eyes. Come what will, methinks I'll chance it, and for pretty things to say, I will read up, during transit, all _The Light of Asia_. Since, Sir EDWIN, dainty dreamer, thine the pen that bids me go, By the fastest train and steamer, straightway off to Tokio. * * * * * THE LION'S DIARY. Bother being caged up in this wooden box along with a boar-hound. Why a boar-hound? Is he supposed to look after me? I rather like that, if he is. "Look after _me_?" Why just with one touch of one of my forepaws I could smash him in half a minute like two-twos. And for the matter of that, that fellow with the whip, who imagines he keeps me in order, by fixing his eye on me. Yes, and the horse too; the whole three of them. But there's that bit of meat at the end of the performance, so I suppose I may as well appear "to come the docile highly trained beast," and go through with the tomfoolery and collar it. "Snarl?" _Do_ I? Of course I do. It's the one outlet I have for my feelings. Who wouldn't snarl under the circumstances? Fancy, me, the "King of Beasts" (it sounds like chaff), dropping off a platform, at a given signal, on to the back of an idiotic circus-horse, stared at through a lot of bars by a house packed full of applauding fools! And we finish up by a scamper all round together that seems vastly to amuse them! What a come-down for a Lion! Learned pigs and educated bears are well enough, but they should know where to draw the line and stop at the "Monarch." I keep pretty quiet at present because it pays, but that snarl of mine may end in a roar. By Jove! if it does, the horse, boar-hound, and fellow with the whip, had better look out for themselves, and that's all I have got to say about it at present. * * * * * Illustration: ETYMOLOGY. "HOW DO YOU DO, MY LITTLE MAN? I'M YOUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOUR, YOU KNOW!" "WHAT'S A _NEIGHBOUR_?"