"ED. WYNN, pikeman of the dashing 22nd King's Ryol ridgemet of
lanciers. Sept. 1815";

and freshly scratched above the inscription:--

"Better at piking than at speling.
22nd K.R. Lancers. JAS. BARNET. Sept. 1917."

The old carp seems to be right, and one war is very like another.
There is no radical change in the orthography of the 22nd King's
Royal Lancers, and some-one else's wall is still the medium for
self-expression.

Old Cyclops must be throwing his mind back a hundred years or so.
There is a rain of bread and biscuits into the moat and a ring of
red grinning faces above the coping. Yesterday I threw a disused
safety-razor blade over the old scoundrel's nose. And "Bless my soul!"
he said, as he lazily bolted it, "there hasn't been such a year for
minnows since 1815."

But Armageddon 1917 holds surprises even for those who live at the
bottom of a moat. For very early this morning a bauble fell into the
moat that Cyclops himself couldn't digest. The old cynic was found
floating, scarred belly upwards, on the surface of the water.

The mess-waiter took charge of the _post-mortem_. Like the _Duke of
Plaza Toro_, he "likes an interment" and rarely misses a last rite.
A keen fisherman, he had little difficulty in extracting an exhibit
for the Court's inspection, which he unhesitatingly pronounced to be
a diamond ring in an advanced state of decomposition.