REWARDS TO RACONTEURS.--I am considered a first-rate storyteller and conversationalist; indeed, few dinner parties (at Lower Tooting) can get on without me. Do you think I could get elected to the Reform Club without paying the entrance subscription? I see that some members of that club have been left L2000 each as a reward for "brightening the evenings" of a deceased member, and I feel certain that had the testator known _me_, he would have increased my legacy to L4000 at least. My sparkling powers of conversation are often called a "gift," but I don't want them to be a gift if I could get anything for them. SYDNEY MACAULAY HAYWARD SMITH. * * * * * PRESENT! FIRE! BANG-KOK!--"Three Frenchmen killed, two wounded; twenty Siamese killed, and twelve wounded,"--such is the first result of French _Humann_-ising influence in Siam. * * * * * A NEW MARITIME RESORT.--"I'm sure," observed Mrs. R., "that a really pleasant thing to do in the summer holidays would be to take a trip to the Specific Islands." * * * * * THE GREATEST AUTHORITY ON THE WORKING OF THE "IN-AND-OUT" CLAUSES.--Mr. SEXTON, M.P.! * * * * * GOING AGAINST THE GREIN.--Refusing to patronise the Independent Theatre. * * * * * FRENCH BILLIARDS AT SIAM.--The Cannon Game. * * * * * Transcriber's Note: This issue contains some dialect. Sundry damaged or missing punctuation has been repaired. Page 25: 'abreviating' corrected to 'abbreviating'. "... as emphasizing, by descriptively abbreviating, these two epithets,..." Page 30: 'Nickledy Nod' is correct. [www . archive.org/stream/laysandlyrics00hawkgoog#page/n124]. (From: "Lays and Lyrics": Nickledy Nod. Dedicated to the "Sweet Girl Graduates of the School of Cookery." (After Punch.)) Page 33: 'where corrected to 'were'. "True, for our wages, which were somewhere near the "Twenty-ones," Great expectations would have been a trifle rash." Page 34: 'nihil tetigit quod non ornavit' = 'he touched nothing without embellishing it'. * * * * *