Our notion of a person of wide tastes is one who likes almost everything that isn't popular. * * * Speaking of the Naval Station, you may have forgotten the stirring ballad which we wrote about it during the war. If so-- YEO-HEAVE-HO! It was a gallant farmer lad Enlisted in the navy. "Give me," said he, "the deep blue sea, The ocean wide and wavy!" A sailor's uniform he'd don, And never would he doff it. He packed his grip, and soon was on His way to Captain Moffett. In cap of white and coat of blue He labored for the nation, A member of the salty crew That worked the Naval Station. He soon became the best of tars, A seaman more than able, By sweeping streets, and driving cars, And waiting on the table. He guarded gates, and shoveled snow, And worked upon the highway. "_All_ lads," said he, "should plough the sea, And would if I had _my_ way." Week-end he took a trolley car, And to the city hied him, Alongside of another tar Who offered for to guide him. The train rolled o'er a trestle high, The river ran below him. "Well, I'll be blamed!" our tar exclaimed, And grabbed his pal to show him. "Yes, dash my weeping eyes!" he cried. "That's water, sure, by gravy! The first blue water I have spied Since joining of the navy!" * * * Now, "landsmen all," the moral's plain: Our navy still is arming, And if you'd plough the well known main, You'd best begin by farming. If you would head a tossing prow Among our navigators, Get up at morn and milk the cow, And yeo-heave-ho the 'taters. Do up your chores, and do 'em brown, And learn to drive a flivver; And some day, when you go to town, You'll see the raging river. * * * The speaker of the House of Commons, who, "trembling slightly with emotion," declared the sitting suspended, needs in his business the calm of the late Fred Hall. While Mr. Hall was city editor of this journal of civilization an irate subscriber came in and mixed it with a reporter. Mr. Hall approached the pair, who were rolling on the floor, and, peering near-sightedly at them, addressed the reporter: "Mr. Smith, when you have finished with this gentleman, there is a meeting at the Fourth Methodist church which I should like to have you cover." * * * In his informing and stimulating collection of essays, "On Contemporary Literature," recently published, Mr. Stuart P. Sherman squanders an entire chapter on Theodore Dreiser. It seems to us that he might have covered the ground and saved most of his space by quoting a single sentence from Anatole France, who, referring to Zola, wrote: "He has no taste, and I have come to believe that want of taste is that mysterious sin of which the Scripture speaks, the greatest of sins, the only one which will not be forgiven." * * *