"_Lock! Lock!_"--Shock! Rock! That's a pretty frock bulging over the gunwale! She looks like to choke with that horrible smoke, which is fuming out of the Steam-Launch funnel. Pleasant old cry! All in, and dry. though we're awfully crowded this first Spring holiday, Better this than St. Stephen's dead-lock! Our serious Senators out for a jolly day Might do worse. Who carries the purse? That ten-foot rod with the toll-net ending it Means a hint. They must make "a mint"; and, by Jove, there are many worse ways of spending it,-- Money, I mean. Now were G-SCH-N seen collecting cash for his dry Exchequer With pole and net, it were nicer, you bet, than keeping up his financial pecker With Spirit Duties! Those two blonde beauties in Cambridge blue are exceeding bonny; B-LF-R now at that same boat's bow would be quite in his element--eh, my sonny? And OLD MORALITY cooling his legs in the stern-sheets yonder would find the steering Easier far than amidst the jar of St. Stephen's, hot with T-M H-LY jeering. S-L-SB-RY, too, with a well-trained crew, would put his back--that broad back of his!--in it. Don't be in a hurry, my nautical friend! we shall all get out in another minute. Just like life! Such fidgety strife to be first to the front when the lock-gates sever. What does it matter, friends, after all? The slow, the skilful, the dull, the clever, The snake-swift "swell" and the splashing 'ARRY, the puffing launch, and the trim outrigger, The calm canoest who hugs the timbers, the fussy punter who toils like a nigger, All will anon be well out in the cutting, the old gates shutting slowly behind them, And where are those who so shoved to the front? At the tail of the race you may presently find them. The G.O.M. (with his collars for sails), that jaunty skiff might be handling. Bless us! Can he take holiday, he whom toil seems to encoil like a shirt of Nessus? Well, Union_ist_ or Separat_ist_, or chap with a twist like C-NN-NGH-M GR-H-M, Or howling PAT, or Aristo_crat_ with manners like BRUMMEL and voice like BRAHAM, Peppery G-SCH-N, or pompous H-RC-RT, or genial SM-TH, the new-made Warden, All, all, to-day, when the world is gay, the stream like silver, the banks a garden, _Much_ worse might do than tog up in blue and join a crew on the rolling river, "Beyond the tide," dropping all their "side," party or personal, leaving "liver," And Influenza, and other "Obstructions," all party-jobbers, all jibbers and jolters, In sunny weather to crowd together in Moulsey Lock, or it might be BOULTER's! * * * * * [Illustration: ELEMENTARY INSTRUCTION IN COOKERY. _Young Lady_. "AND NOW, JANE, WHAT'S THE _NEXT_ THING TO DO, AFTER PUTTING THE MEAT AND POTATOES IN THE STEWPAN?"