"The Earl of Athlone walked away on foot, as is the simple way of our Royal Family." _Sunday Paper._ * * * * * "High-backed chair of Tudor period, about 1660."--_Advt. in Daily Paper._ We don't question its genuineness, but infer that it has been subjected to Restoration. * * * * * "Furnished House, consisting of dining, drawing, eight breakfast rooms, etc." _Sunday Paper._ Would suit a large family inclined to be short-tempered in the morning. * * * * * [Illustration: A TOO-FREE COUNTRY. ALIEN RIOTER. "DOWN WITH EVERYBODY!" P.C. JOHN BULL. "WELL, WE'LL MAKE A START WITH YOU."] * * * * * [Illustration: PEOPLE WE ADMIRE. THE HERO WHO KEEPS UP HIS ARMY EXERCISES, STRIKE OR NO STRIKE.] * * * * * A LETTER TO THE BACK-BLOCKS. DEAR GINGER,--So you have bought a very promising little gold-mine from a rollicking Irish nobleman called Patrick Terence O'Ryan, who is retiring on Mayo to take up the paternal estates. H-m!--have you? And you think you yourself will be retiring home presently on the proceeds of the said mine? H-m! again. There is a certain familiarity in your description of the gentleman. Tell me, has this Hibernian philanthropist a slight squint, a broken nose and a tendency to lisp in moments of excitement? I think I see you nod. Ginger, I once bought a mine from that man. His name was Algernon Maddox Cholmondely _then_, and he was homeward bound to assume the ancestral acres in Flint. He escorted me down the hole and displayed visible gold sparkling all along the reef. A week after he had gone I found that he had put it there with a shot-gun--an old "salter's" trick, but new to me at the time. You are not likely to be seeing Patrick Algernon Terence Maddox O'Ryan-Cholmondely again, but, if you should, remember me to him, please--with the business end of a pick-axe. Always delighted to keep in touch with old friends. Ginger, _you never can tell_. This is not an original remark. One of our brainy boys--George Bernard, unless I err--thought of it before I did; went away into the wilderness, wrapped his grey-matter in wet Jaeger bandages, subsisted on a diet of premasticated grape-nuts and produced this aphorism. And there's a world of truth in it, my son. You certainly never can.