Volume 25 — DID YOU EVER?

Did you ever know a strike which did not hit the workman harder than the master?

Did you ever know a hotel-keeper, whose "wax" lights would bear the test of a tallow-chandler?

Did you ever know a Continental tourist who, if he unfortunately happened to speak English, didn't everywhere discover he was charged at least double for it?

Did you ever find a "professional" win a game of billiards of you without assigning your defeat entirely to his "flukes?"

Did you ever know a cockney take to boating without dressing himself up à la T. P. Cooke?

Did you ever meet a diner-out of sufficient strength of mind to ask for "cabbage?"

Did you ever hear a loo-player confess to having won more than "just a shilling or two?"

Did you ever know a pic-nic go off without the awful apparition of a "wops?"

Did you ever know a penny-a-liner who, in speaking of a fire, could abstain from calling it "the devouring element?"

Did you ever find a Continental shopkeeper whose "prix fixe" might not be proved a lucus-a-nonentity?

Did you ever start upon a railway journey without hearing the immortal observation "Now we're off?"

Did you ever know an "alarming sacrifice," which in practice did not prove to be completely one of principle?

Did you ever in your life hail a City-bound omnibus that wasn't going "a'most directly" back to Bayswater?

And as a final clincher—Did you ever know a cabman who, since the new Act came in force, could by any eloquence be induced to give you change for a shilling?

Getting into their Good Books.

Mr. G. V. Brooke has advertised his intention to establish, out of the profits of his acting, a "Free Library for the People." We hope that the nation, in accepting the "tragedian's" books, will not pledge itself to adopt all his "readings."