We've waited many a weary week With bulging eyes and fevered brow, While WILSON pressed upon its beak His League-of-Nations' olive bough, Wondering what amount of weight Its efforts could negotiate, How much, in fact, the bird would stand Without collapsing on the land. And, even though it should contrive To keep its pinions on the flap, And by a _tour de force_ survive This devastating handicap, Yet are there perils in the skies Whereon we blandly shut our eyes, But which are bound to be incurred, And, notably, the Bolshy-bird. This brand of vulture, most obscene, May have designs upon the Dove; Its carrion taste was never keen On the Millennial reign of Love; And I, for one, am stiff with fear About our little friend's career, Lest that disgusting fowl should maul And eat it, olive-branch and all. I mention this to mark the quaint Notion of "Peace" the public has, That wants to smear the Town with paint, To whoop and jubilate and jazz; And while our flappers beat the floor There's Russia soaked in seas of gore, And LENIN waxing beastly fat; Nobody seems to think of that. O.S. * * * * * PERFECTLY UNAUTHENTIC ANECDOTES. _which may be reproduced (with the permission of Mr. Punch) in any forthcoming volume of Anybody's Reminiscences_. "You do things so sketchily and casually," said FRITH to WHISTLER one day. "Now when I paint a picture I take pains. 'The Derby Day' cost me weeks and months of sleeplessness. I did nothing else; I gave my whole mind to it." "Oh," said WHISTLER, "that's where it's gone to, is it?" * * * * * When Mr. BERNARD SHAW made his tour of the ports in order to popularise Socialism in the Navy, he was courteously received at Portsmouth by Sir HEDWORTH MEUX. The talk happened to turn on the theatre, and the Admiral was candid enough to confess himself somewhat at sea with regard to the merits of contemporary writers. "Now, Mr. SHAW," he said in his breezy way, "I wish you would tell me who is the most eminent of the playwrights of to-day?" "Ay, ay, Sir," said Mr. SHAW promptly. * * * * * Dr. Brotherton told me that he was once with MATTHEW ARNOLD in an election crowd at Oxford, when the Professor of Poetry accidentally collided with a working-man flown with Radicalism and beer. "Go to blazes!" said the proletarian. "My friend," replied ARNOLD, "we are well met. In me you see the official representative of Literature, whereas you, I perceive, stand for Dogma." * * * * * Mrs. Brown of Newquay, who claims to be the original _Mrs. Partington_, told me that SYDNEY SMITH'S last years were overclouded by his inability to discover the riddle to which the answer is contained in the words, "The one rode a horse and the other rode a dendron."