"The regulations will impose a great deal of work on the police, and it is the duty of the public to make it as light as possible."--_Hampshire Observer._ _Lux_, in fact, _a non lucendo_. * * * * * A LONELY LIFE. "Nothing but margarine has entered my door since the War began."--_Dr. C. W. SALEEBY in "Daily Chronicle."_ * * * * * THE WATCH DOGS. XXXIV. MY DEAR CHARLES,--We're having a great time with our new arrival, one of those confounded civilians, who are only let into the business because the business, in these modern and highly complicated days, cannot be carried on without them. He's a jolly old Lieutenant of about fifty years; he has a concentrated experience of the world but doesn't remember having been mixed up in a big European war before. At first I kept on telling him that business is one thing and war is another, but he wouldn't see it and persisted in doing and saying and thinking things which were bound to land us in a national disaster. He had no respect whatever for the Pass Memo., his central and sole idea being to push along with the elimination of the Bosch. When he wanted something done, he just went to the Top-man of the department, called him "I say," and went straight to the point. The Top-man had never been asked to do business this way before. He put up with it a dozen times or so, but finally he had to take steps. So he wrote a little note on a Buff slip and addressed it, very rightly of course, to the Top-man but one; and the Top-man but one read it and passed it very carefully to the Top-man but two; and so, with that inevitability which is the hall-mark of the system, it was passed and passed and passed until it came (in less than a week) to the office of the ancient Lieutenant on the opposite side of the street. And it ran: "Lieutenant So-and-So should be notified that it is neither necessary nor desirable that he should call personally at this office to transact his business. Matters should be put forward by him through the usual course of correspondence." The ancient Lieutenant, who wouldn't hurt anybody's feelings for the world, felt that it was up to him to put the matter right. So he stepped across to the Top-man's office, and when the Top-man asked him, somewhat pointedly, if he had received his note, the Ancient very genially replied, "Yes, thank you," and explained that he had just looked in personally to acknowledge receipt of same.