Now my unhappy friend is on the horns of a dilemma. He pines to go back to broking as sincerely as some men pine to travel or to write poetry, but every time he ventures out in mufti some painful incident warns him what he will have to suffer as a civilian, with his round rosy face, innocent blue eyes, curly hair and bright smile. He hears himself referred to as a chip of the old block. Chance acquaintances ask him if his father or big brothers were at the Front. To-day, he told me very bitterly, he was asked if he did not wish the War had lasted a little longer so that he might have been old enough to go out and fight! "I can't bear it, old man," he said. "There's something about me that draws out their sentimentality, and they've all got to say something about my youth, and the heritage of peace that the 1917 conscripts won for me. They talk as if I had been busy with a feeding-bottle instead of compressing my silly face in a box-respirator." His dilemma is a very painful one for a man so sensitive and at the same time so enamoured of stockbroking. Hard as the renunciation will be, I really believe he will end by turning his back on the Exchange for ever and taking a regular commission, though I try to persuade him that if he will only brave the horrors of peace as he braved the horrors of war he will win through in the end and grow out of his face. * * * * * PROMOTION. "Ex-Batman wanted as General in private house."--_Times_. * * * * * [Illustration: AN IRRESISTIBLE CLAIM. ROUMANIA. "I HOPE, WHILE THEY'RE FEEDING THEIR STARVING ENEMIES, THEY WON'T FORGET THEIR STARVING FRIENDS."] * * * * * ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT. [Illustration: _Duke of Venice (the Lord Chancellor), to Portia_. "YOU ARE WELCOME: TAKE YOUR PLACE."--_Merchant of Venice, Act IV. Sc. 1. _] * * * * * _Monday, March 10th_.--Sir JAMES AGG-GARDNER asked two questions dealing with the distribution of poisons. By a singular coincidence--or was it design?--the hon. baronet was himself, as Chairman of the Kitchen Committee, accused by Mr. BOTTOMLEY of having purveyed poison in the shape of stale fish to sundry Members of the House, thereby causing them serious internal disturbance. Happily he was able to show that the charge was entirely baseless. Scots legal terminology always puzzles me. The "peremptory diets" which Mr. MACQUISTEN urged upon the attention of the SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY as a remedy for the grievances of Glasgow's financiers are not, as you might suppose, a synonym for forcible feeding; nor have they anything to do with the substitutes for "parritch" to which, as I gathered from Mr. STURROCK, the people of Scotland are being obliged to resort owing to the high price of oatmeal.