Recall, dear John, a certain day Back in the times of long ago-- A stuffy old estaminet Under the great peaks fledged with snow; The Spring that set our hearts rejoicing As up the serried mountains' bar We climbed our tortuous way Rolls-Roycing From Gap to Col Bayard. Little we dreamed, though that high air Quickens imagination's flight, What monstrous bird and very rare Would in these parts some day alight; How, like a roc of Arab fable, A Zepp _en route_ from London town, Trying to find its German stable, Would here come blundering down. The swallows--you remember? yes?-- Northward, just then, were heading straight; No hint they dropped by which to guess That other fowl's erratic fate; An inner sense supplied their vision; Not one of them contused his scalp Or lost his feathers in collision Bumping against an Alp. But they, the Zepp-birds, flopped and barged From Lunéville to Valescure (Where we of old have often charged The bunkers of the Côte d'Azur); And half a brace--so strange and far a Course to the South it had to shape-- Is still expected in Sahara Or possibly the Cape. In happier autumns you and I (You by your art and I by luck) Have pulled the pheasant off the sky Or flogged to death the flighting duck; But never yet--how few the chances Of pouching so superb a swag-- Have we achieved a feat like France's Immortal gas-bag bag. O.S. * * * * * PURPLE PATCHES FROM LORD YORICK'S GREAT BOOK. (_SPECIAL REVIEW_.) Lord Yorick's _Reminiscences_, just published by the house of Hussell, abound in genial anecdote, in which the "personal note" is lightly and gracefully struck, in welcome contrast to the stodgy political memoirs with which we have been surfeited of late. We append some extracts, culled at random from these jocund pages:-- THE SHAH'S ROMANCE. "I don't suppose it is a State secret--but if it is there can be no harm in divulging the fact--that there was some thought of a marriage in the 'eighties' between the Shah of PERSIA and the lovely Miss Malory, the lineal descendant of the famous author of the Arthurian epic. Mr. GLADSTONE, Mme. DE NOVIKOFF and the Archbishop of CANTERBURY were prime movers in the negotiations. But the SHAH'S table manners and his obstinate refusal to be converted to the doctrines of the Anglican Church, on which Miss Malory insisted, proved an insurmountable obstacle, and the arrangement, which might have been fraught with inestimable advantages to Persia, came to nought. Miss Malory afterwards became Lady Yorick." PRACTICAL JOKING AT OXFORD IN THE "SIXTIES."