No novels now, but novelettes;
Cigars give place to cigarettes.
Titanic "suns" to twinkling "stars,"
Pictures to sketches, "pomes" to "pars";
Bonnets to things like housemaids' caps,
Banquets to tit-bits, books to scraps,
And three-vol novels to "short stories."
Gibbon-like length and epic glories,
Like mammoths and cave-bears, are gone,
Earth brings not back the mastodon;
The microbe takes its place. They kill us
Not by a giant, but bacillus.
Monsters, huge dragons, Laidly Worms,
We fear no more, 'tis unseen "germs"
That floor us in our life's full pride.
We want a "Jack the Germicide,"
And not the Giant Killer now.
Behemoth and the big bow-wow
Are gone; for aught not smart and little
We do not care one jot or tittle!
* * * * *
FAMILIAR LATIN QUOTATION (_adapted for the use of Empire, Alhambra, and
Music Halls generally_).--"_Spectaculum veniunt_; _venit inspector_;
_out tipsy_."
* * * * *
[Illustration: IMPROVEMENTS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.