In any case of civility or attention on the part of their _employés_, the Directors earnestly request that the same be reported immediately to the Head Office, Poet's Corner, where the matter will be promptly dealt with. * * * * * [Illustration: THE GIFTED AMATEUR. _The German Emperor._ "I WILL NOW SING YOU A LITTLE THING OF MY OWN!" [_The effect on the Audience was instantaneous._ ["The German Emperor's song will be published this week in Germany, France, and England."]] * * * * * THE MATRON'S HISS. (_An Apologue with an Application._) [A lady-bicyclist the other day, riding in "rational dress," was roundly hissed by an elderly Mrs. GRUNDY, standing by. The wheel-woman is said to have retorted, "Are you _women_ who thus hiss me? When you bathe, you wear a special costume, which you deem suitable. When I ride, I do the same. Where's the difference?"] [Illustration] "But," said the Proud Briton to the Perfect Stranger, "in addition to our armies and fleets, our religions and our laws, our parsons and our policemen, we have one Protective Power, moral palladium and social ægis in one, whose value outweighs that of all others." The Perfect Stranger looked surprised. "And what," said he, "is that?" "We call it the 'Matron's Hiss,'" replied the Proud Briton, with enigmatical complacency. "Anything _contra bonos mores_, bad form, improper, new-fangled, unconventional, unhealthy, unwholesome, immodest, vulgar, vicious, venal, on to summarise still further, anything that is either new or naughty, or both, is immediately 'put down' by the 'Matron's Hiss.'" Quoth the Perfect Stranger, "I should like to observe it in operation." "You shall!" said the Proud Briton. * * * * * The Perfect Stranger, under the guidance of the Proud Briton went everywhere and saw everything. He saw a sweet, though apparently semi-suffocated, young girl dressed (or, as _he_ would by unaided judgment have concluded, _un_dressed) for her first ball. He saw an elderly fine lady, a high-nosed _dame de par le monde_, prepared--he would have said, painted and glazed--for a high, social "function." He saw a fair _ingénue_, under the eyes of her vigilant mamma and chaperon, in one evening waltzing with, and trying to win, as more permanent partners, an elderly but opulent Satyr, and a youthful, brainless, but titled _Cloten_. He heard conversation which the talkers themselves laughingly called _risqué_ (and which he would grimly have called rude) at fashionable dinner-tables between smirking matrons and leering elderly men. He witnessed the vagaries of despot Fashion, the (as he considered) "immodesty" of "full dress," the "impropriety" of flagrant "cosmeticism," the "unhealthiness" of inadequate or superfluous clothing, the "cruelty" of corsets, the "vulgarity" and wanton murderousness of bird-destroying feather trimmings.