And the Raven still is sitting, croaking statements most unfitting, On BRITANNIA's much-peeled bust that's placed above my Office-door, And if _Pangloss_, e'en in seeming, lent an ear to his dark dreaming, Useless were official scheming, grants of millions by the score, For my soul were like the shadow that he casts upon the floor, Dark and dismal evermore! * * * * * [Illustration: THINGS ONE WOULD RATHER HAVE EXPRESSED DIFFERENTLY. _Aunt Jane_. "THAT MAKES THREE WEDDINGS IN OUR FAMILY WITHIN A TWELVEMONTH! IT WILL BE _YOUR_ TURN NEXT, MATILDA!" _Matilda_. "OH, NO!" _Aunt Jane_. "WELL, THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY THINGS HAPPEN SOMETIMES, YOU KNOW!"] * * * * * TUPPER'S PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY UP TO DATE. ["The range of our inquiry was intended to include the whole migratory range for seals.... Our movements were kept most secret."--_Sir George Baden-Powell on the Work of the Behring Sea Commission_.] We came, we saw, we--held our tongues (myself--BADEN-POWELL--and Mr. DAWSON.) We popped on each seal-island "unbeknownst," and what we discovered we held our jaws on. We'd five hundred interviews within three months, which I think "cuts the record" in interviewing, Corresponded with 'Frisco, Japan, and Russia; so I hope you'll allow we've been "up and doing." (Not up and _saying_, be't well understood). As TUPPER (the Honourable C.H., Minister Of Fisheries) said, in the style of his namesake, "The fool imagines all Silence is sinister, "But the wise man knows that it's often dexterous." Be sure no inquisitive shyness or bounce'll Make us "too previous" with our Report, which goes first to the QUEEN and the Privy Council. Some bigwig's motto is, "Say and Seal," but as TUPPER remarked a forefinger laying To the dexter side of a fine proboscis, "Our motto at present is, Seal _without_ saying!" * * * * * LEGAL QUERY.--The oldest of the thirteen Judges on the Scotch Bench is YOUNG. Any chance for a Junior after this? * * * * * THE TRAVELLING COMPANIONS. NO. XII. SCENE--_In front of the Hotel Bodenhaus at Spluegen. The Diligence for Bellinzona is having its team attached. An elderly Englishwoman is sitting on her trunk, trying to run through the last hundred pages of a novel from the Hotel Library before her departure. PODBURY is in the Hotel, negotiating for sandwiches. CULCHARD is practising his Italian upon a very dingy gentleman in smoked spectacles, with a shawl round his throat._