"You should see the English Education Bill I've had for my boy's
schooling last half!"

* * * * *

MR. PUNCH TO THE LIFEBOAT-MEN.

[Illustration]

[The President of the Board of Trade has, by command of
the QUEEN, conveyed, through the Royal National Lifeboat
Institution, to the crews of the lifeboats of Atherfield,
Brightstone, and Brooke, Her Majesty's warm appreciation of
their gallant conduct in saving the crew and passengers of the
steamship _Eider_.]

Your hand, lad! 'Tis wet with the brine, and the salt spray has
sodden your hair,
And the face of you glisteneth pale with the stress of the
struggle out there;
But the savour of salt is as sweet to the sense of a Briton,
sometimes,
As the fragrance of wet mignonette, or the scent of the
bee-haunted limes.

Ay, sweeter is manhood, though rough, than the smoothest
effeminate charms
To the old sea-king strain in our blood in the season of shocks
and alarms,
When the winds and the waves and the rocks make a chaos of danger