I stood against the window And looked between the bars, And there were strings of fairies Hanging from the stars; Everywhere and everywhere In shining swinging chains, Like rainbows spun from moonlight And twisted into skeins. They kept on swinging, swinging, They flung themselves so high They caught upon the pointed moon And hung across the sky; And when I woke next morning There still were crowds and crowds In beautiful bright bunches All sleeping on the clouds. * * * * * From a constable's evidence:-- "In his attempt to arrest her she threw herself on the ground and tried to smack his face."--_Weekly Dispatch_. The long arm of the law resents such presumptuous rivalry. * * * * * "ALL KINDS OF DEVILS MADE TO ORDER. ---- & ----, SHEFFIELD."--_The Ironmonger._ This looks uncommonly like an offer to trade with the enemy. * * * * * [Illustration: _Wife (to warrior, whose politeness to the waitress has been duly noted)_. "HUM! YOU SEEM TO 'AVE COME BACK 'ALF FRENCH."] * * * * * THE GIPSY SOLDIER The gipsy wife came to my door with pegs and brooms to sell They make by many a roadside fire and many a greenwood dell, With bee-skeps and with baskets wove of osier, rush and sedge, And withies from the river-beds and brambles from the hedge. With her stately grace, like PHARAOH'S queen (for all her broken shoon), You'd marvel one so tall and proud should ever ask a boon, But "living's dear for us poor folk" and "money can't be had," And "her man's in Mespotania" and "times is cruel bad!" Yes, times is cruel bad, we know, and passing strange also, And it's strange as anything I've heard that gipsy men should go To lands through which their forbears trod from some unknown abode The way that ended long ago upon the Portsmouth Road. I wonder if the Eastern skies and Eastern odours seem Familiar to that gipsy man, as memories of a dream; Does Tigris' flow stir ancient dreams from immemorial rest Ere ever gipsy poached the trout of Itchen and of Test? Does something in him seem to know those red and arid lands Where dust of ancient cities sleeps beneath the drifted sands? Do Kurdish girls with lustrous eyes beneath their drooping lids And Eastern babes look strangely like the Missis and the kids? I wonder if the waving palms, when desert winds do blow, In their dry rustling seem to sing a song he used to know; Or does he only curse the heat and wish that he were laid Beneath the spread of RUFUS' oaks or Harewood's beechen shade? Well, luck be with the gipsy man and lead him safely home To the old familiar caravan and ways he used to roam, And bring him as it brought his sires from their far first abode To where the gipsy camp-fires burn along the Portsmouth Road. C. F. S.