Eighty-eight policemen were bitten by dogs in 1913, but only forty-four
in 1915, says _The Daily Mail_, and quotes a policeman as saying that
"dogs are not half so vicious as they used to be." The true explanation
is that policemen no longer taste as good as in the old rabbit-pie days.
***
Recent heavy rain and the absence of sunshine have, it is stated, caused
corn in Essex to sprout in the ear. This idea of portable allotments is
appealing very strongly to busy City men.
***
Feeling about the Stockholm Conference is changing a little, and several
people suggest that Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD might be sent as a reprisal.
***
Sixty-seven children were recently lost on one day at New Brighton. The
fact that they were all restored to their parents before nightfall
speaks well for the honesty of the general public.
***
The German authorities have further restricted the foods to be supplied
to dogs, and German scientists are now trying to grow dachshunds with a
shorter span.
***
"We have a Coal Controller, but where is the coal?" plaintively asks a
contemporary. There is no satisfying the jaundiced Press.
***
A well-dressed female baby a month old has been found under the seat of
a first-class compartment in a train on the Chertsey line. Several
mothers have written to congratulate her upon her courageous and
unconventional protest against the fifty per cent. increase in railway
fares.
***
A Glasgow woman has been fined a guinea for trying to enlist in the
Irish Guards. Only the Scottish Courts carry pride of race to these
absurd lengths.
***
It is announced that the recent increase in the price of bacon was
sanctioned by the FOOD CONTROLLER. The news has given great satisfaction
to law-abiding consumers, who bitterly resented the unauthorised
increases (upon which this is a further increase) that were made under
the old _régime_.
***
A dress made from banana skins is now being exhibited in London. It is,
we believe, a _négligé_ costume, the sort of thing one can slip on at
any time.
***
"If you had let the boy eat it, it would have punished him a great deal
more than I can," said the North London magistrate to a man who was
prosecuting a boy for stealing an unripe pear. It is a splendid tribute
to the humanity of our stipendiary magistrates that the heroic offer of
the boy to accept the greater punishment was promptly refused.
***
A workman at Kinlochleven, Argyllshire, found a live crab in a pocket of
sand at a depth of more than ten feet. On being taken to the
police-station and shown the "All Clear" notice the cautious crustacean
consented to go straight home.
***
At a flower-day sale at Grimsby one thousand pounds was paid by a local
shipowner for a blue periwinkle. In recognition of his generosity no
charge was made for the pin.
***
A Vienna telegram states that the Emperor KARL has handed the Grand
Cross of St. Stephen to the GERMAN CHANCELLOR. The latter quite rightly
protests that Herr BETHMANN-HOLLWEG is the real culprit.
***
From Scotland comes the news that an inmate of a workhouse has received
an income-tax form to fill in. This is considered to be but a foretaste
of the time when all income-tax papers will have to be addressed to the
workhouses.
* * * * *
In a Gloucester meadow, Lieutenant JAGGARD has picked a mushroom
weighing ten ounces and measuring twenty-seven inches in circumference.
Eyewitnesses describe the gallant officer's enveloping movement as a
really brilliant piece of single-handed work.
***
The Prussian Military Press Bureau, among its other fantasies, has
discovered with horror that Calais has been leased to England for
ninety-nine years. Our own information is that the situation is really
worse than that, the lease being granted alternatively for ninety-nine
years "or the duration of the War."
***
An official statement points out that the work of the National Service
Department is continuing without interruption pending the appointment of
a new Director-General. It appears that the members of the staff have
expressed a desire to die in harness.
* * * * *