proposal to tax perambulators! It was cruel, unmanly so to do, but I
was weak and foolish! And now I cannot die easily! Would that I could
live to repair the past.

_Opposition Whip_ (_suddenly springing up from behind a limber à la_
HAWKSHAW _the Detective_). It is _not_ too late! Return with me to
Westminster forthwith. The Third Reading is down for to-night! With
a special train we shall be in time! You can yet record your vote!

_Col. X._ (_suddenly reviving_). Say you so? Then I _will_ recover! I
_will_ do my duty!

[_Exit, to vote against his Party, and to be put permanently
on the shelf, from a military point of view!_

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

SIR EDWIN ARNOLD's paper on Japan, in _Scribner_, for March, is
interesting and also amusing. The Japanese seemed to be a charming
people; and the Japanese women delightful as wives; but then they can
be divorced for being talkative.

_A propos_ of Japan, to judge from one of our LIKA JOKO's capital
illustrations of Hospital Nursing in _The English Illustrated
Magazine_, the Matron's room must be "an illigant place, intoirely";
while as for amusement, if the picture of a nurse giving a patient a
cup of ink by mistake for liquorice-water isn't a real good practical
side-splitter, the Baron would like to be informed what is? Then we