[_The Daisy_ and _The Crossing_, which both dealt with the life after death, have come to an untimely end; and, in deference to public feeling, the heroine of _Every Woman's Privilege_ has been furnished with a fresh _fiance_.] When in my stall at eve I sit (And these remarks would still apply, Perhaps with greater force, were I Accommodated in the Pit)-- Worn with the long day's dusty strife, I ask a brief surcease of gloom; I want a mirror held to life, But not the life beyond the tomb. The views of parties who have "crossed" (Meaning to Jordan's further shore), Those, as they say, who've "gone before," But not (unhappily) been "lost"-- They make me ill; they decompose My vital essence at its fount (Excepting BARRIE'S _Mary Rose_, But then, of course, he doesn't count). Give me the life that quick men lead, Of which I know the hopes and fears Better than those of shadier spheres; And, if at first you don't succeed, If you should hear the critics croak, "As to your heroine's choice, you err," Just hand her to the other bloke-- That's what they did with MARIE LOeHR. So shall creative art suggest A world where people may revise Their silly past, and realise Those second thoughts which are the best; Where, having seen the larger light, A perfect liberty to hedge And swap the wrong man for the right Is "Every Woman's Privilege." O. S. * * * * * YET ONE MORE PLAN FOR IRELAND. Feeling rather lonely because almost everybody had entered for the great Irish Problem Competition in the morning and evening press except myself, I sat down and wrote the following solution, which I posted immediately to the Editors of _The Times_ and of _The Westminster Gazette_:-- "SIR"--I began indignantly, for I noticed all the best competitors begin like that. In these Bolshevistic days I should have preferred of course to have started off with "Comrade" or "Brother," or even, since I was writing from the heart of the country, have opened with "Eh bor," as people do in dialect novels, but, fearing I might be disqualified, I began, as I say, "Sir," and went on, much as the other statesmen did:-- "In all the lengthy annals of this Government, vacillation between weakness and tyranny has never proved so disastrous as it is proving in Ireland to-day, and the conduct of that unhappy country's affairs is now plunged in a chaos so profoundly chaotic that it has become a gross misuse of language to call them affairs at all. Out of all this welter and confusion two salient facts are seen to emerge:-- "(1) No two Englishmen are agreed upon a settlement that will at the same time satisfy the just aspirations of Ireland and preserve the integrity of the British Empire. "(2) No two Irishmen are either.