[Illustration: _Shopkeeper._ "YES, I WANT A GOOD USEFUL LAD TO BE PARTLY INDOORS AND PARTLY OUTDOORS." _Applicant._ "AND WHAT BECOMES OF ME WHEN THE DOOR SLAMS?"] * * * * * A Chance for the Illiterate. "Wanted, a good, all-round Gardener; illegible."--_Provincial Paper._ "Gardener.--Wanted at once, clever experienced man with good knowledge of toms., cucs., mums., &c., to work up small nursery." _Provincial Paper._ One with a knowledge of nursery language preferred. * * * * * "MANCHESTER, ENG. The election of directors of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce resulted in the return of eighteen out of twenty-two directors who are definitely committed to the policy of no free trade with the 60th Canadian Battalion." _Victoria Colonist (B.C.)._ We hope the battalion will not retaliate by refusing protection to Manchester, Eng. * * * * * THE CURSE OF BABEL. Let me tell you about the Baronne de Blanqueville and her grandson. The Baronne is a Belgian lady who came to England in the early days of the refugee movement, and established herself here in our village. With her came her younger daughter and Lou-lou, the infant son of an elder daughter, who had for some reason to be left behind in Belgium. Lou-lou was a year old when, with his grandmother and his aunt, he settled in England as an _émigré_. He was then inarticulate; now he has gained the use of his tongue. He has had a little English nursemaid to attend on him, and he has become a familiar object in many English families of the neighbourhood. In fact, he has had a very English bringing up, and now that he is more than two years old and can talk, he insists on talking English with volubility and understanding it with completeness. I may mention, by the way, that someone has taught him some expressions unusual in so young a mouth. The other day I met him in his perambulator. He said, "I take the air. I'm damn comfable;" whereupon the nursemaid blushed and chid him. That, however, is not the point--at any rate, not the whole of it. What I wish to make clear is this: the Baronne neither speaks nor understands English, whereas Lou-lou speaks a great deal of English and no French at all. He rejects that language with a violent shake of his curly head. He stamps his small foot and tells his adoring grandmother to speak English or leave him alone. Thus a gulf has begun to yawn between the Baronne and her beloved Lou-lou. Communications are all but broken off. Lou-lou's aunt is in better case, for she is slowly acquiring English; but the Baronne, I think, will never learn _any_ English. What is to be done? * * * * * "The rage for flower-trimming is nothing short of an obeisance."--_Evening Paper._