Under the license ladies will be permitted to cross cues with gentlemen partners in a public billiard-room."--_Local Paper._ It is supposed that their worships were under the impression that billiards was a new form of shinty. * * * * * THE TUBE CURE. [It has been observed that employees in the Tubes never catch cold while at work, and doctors, questioned by an evening paper, have said that "the Tube atmosphere should be quite likely to cure a cold if breathed long enough--say for an hour at a stretch."] To-day, when I acquire a cold (Rude Boreas having blustered), I do not, as in times of old, Immerse my feet in mustard; I put a penny in a slot At some Tube railway station And draw a ticket for a not Far distant destination. I shun the crowded lifts, although They're right enough in their way, And make my calm, unruffled, slow Descension by the stairway; 'Tis there a man can be alone, Immune from all intrusion; I doubt if there was ever known Its equal for seclusion. Where no invading footsteps fall I quaff the healthy vapours, While glancing at my ease through all The illustrated papers; And since I've found the bottom stair A place they don't upholster, I always take when going there A small pneumatic bolster. Not till an hour or twain have gone, Thus pleasantly expended, Do I proceed to carry on, And, when my journey's ended, I find all dread bacilli slain-- No germ shows his (or her) face-- And so, my cherry self again, Come blithely to the surface. * * * * * A BUNCH OF POETS. Mr. Obadiah Geek has broken his long silence to some purpose. Those who remember his pre-war achievements in the field of polychromatic romanticism will hardly be prepared for his present development, which lifts him at a bound from the overcrowded ranks of lyric-writers to the uncongested heights whereon recline the great masters of epic poetry. And yet it was perhaps inevitable. The thunder and the reek of war (the last two years of which, we believe, were spent by Mr. Geek in the Egg Control Department) could scarcely have failed to imprint their mark on the author of _Eros in Eruption_; and so he has given us a real epic, whose very title, _Ad Astra_, is symbolic of the high altitudes in which he so triumphantly and so securely navigates. Outwardly it is a story of the War, but there is little difficulty in probing the allegory; and those who follow the hero's vicissitudes as a private in the Gasoliers, right through to his victorious advancement to the rank of Acting Lance-Corporal, unpaid (and there is a symbolism even in the "unpaid"), will readily supply the application to the affairs of everyday life.