My most colloquial phrases fell, I found, extremely flat.
They _may_ have come out wrong-side up, but none the worse for that.

I tried them with my Manual; it was but little good;
For not one word of their replies I ever understood.
They never said the sentences that _should_ have followed next:
I found it quite impossible to keep them to the text!

Besides, unblushing reference to a Conversation-Book
Imparts to social intercourse an artificial look.
So I let the beggars have their way. 'Twas everywhere the same;
I led the proper openings--they _wouldn't_ play the game.

Now I've pitched the Manual away that got me in this mess,
And in ingenious pantomime my wishes I express.
They take me for an idiot mute, an error I deplore:
But still--_I'm better understood than e'er I was before!_

* * * * *

A PRODUCT OF THE SILLY SEASON.

DEAR MR. PUNCH,

London at the end of August is not particularly inviting, save in one
respect--it is negatively pleasant to find that _Matinées_ are all
but suspended. I should say quite, were it not that the Shaftesbury
Theatre on the 27th opened its doors at a quarter to three o'clock
in the afternoon, for the performance of _The Violin Makers_, an
adaptation of _Le Luthier de Crémone_, and the production of a "new