[Illustration: ENHANCED VALUE. _'Arry._ "WHAT SORT OF A JOB'S THAT YOU'VE GOT AT BABEL BUILDINGS, ALF?" _Alf._ "JOLLY 'ARD; ALL THE MESSAGES AND PARCELS FROM THE TOP OF THE 'OUSE TO THE BASEMENT GO THROUGH ME; AND I'M ONLY GETTING THIRTY BOB A WEEK!" _'Arry._ "TELL YER WHAT, OLD MAN, YOU'D COMMAND DOUBLE THE MONEY IF YOU WAS FITTED UP WITH A LIFT AND A SPEAKIN'TUBE!"] * * * * * "LOST RINGS." SIR,--I have seen some letters in the _Daily Graphic_ on the above subject. A much more curious thing happened to me on April 1, 1887, at twenty-five minutes past ten in the morning. I dropped a pin about four yards from the south-western corner of the Marble Arch. It is almost incredible that exactly three years later I picked up a pin, at 4.17 in the afternoon, three yards and seven and a quarter inches to the south-east of the Humane Society's Receiving House. I have studied carefully the levels of the ground, the flow of the surface water, and the direction of the prevailing air currents, and I am reluctantly forced to the conclusion that it was _not_ the same pin. Had it been, I should have found it five and a half inches further north. The question now is, whose pin was it?--Your obedient servant, SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR. DEAR SIR,--Some weeks ago I rode outside an omnibus from Piccadilly Circus to Charing Cross. Getting down hastily, when I found that it went on to Westminster instead of the City, I left behind a large grey parrot in a cage, a siphon of soda-water, and a St. Bernard dog. Yesterday, when I climbed on to an omnibus following the same route, I found my cage, my siphon, and my dog! It was the same omnibus, and the faithful beast was still there. Unfortunately the parrot and the soda-water were not, for the sagacious animal had evidently made use of them to sustain life, not very satisfactorily, for he was a mere skeleton. Yours obediently, CONSTANT READER. DEAR MR. PUNCH,--Last evening I went out to dinner, and put my one latch-key in my pocket. Marvellous to relate, on my return home at three A.M., I took it, as I thought, from my pocket, and found that it had become two! Yours faithfully, BOOSEY TITE. * * * * * [Illustration: "EHEU FUGACES----" AND HAVE YOU MET MY FRIEND LILY MACPHERSON IN GLASGOW? HOW PRETTY WE THOUGHT HER! "_PRETTY_, GRANDMAMMA! WHY, SHE'S AS FAT AS CAN BE, AND RED-FACED, AND NO TEETH!" "AH WELL! FORTY YEARS _DO_ CHANGE A GIRL!"] * * * * * JAP THE GIANT-KILLER. (_Fragment of a Tale of New Japan as told around a Fire-Brazier in Dai Nippon._) * * * * *