various contributors

“ Snatching up the rifles, Ralph followed the girl as she threaded her way through the trees. At last she halted abruptly. "Look" she whispered. "There they are."
And, indeed, Ralph saw that all the trees around him were congested with grouse. He levelled his rifle and fired.
Bang! A grouse fell at his feet. He snatched the second rifle from Lady Margaret, who had assumed the rôle of loader. Bang ! Another fell. There was no escape from that deadly eye.
Lady Margaret had been brought up to sport from her earliest youth. As a child she had watched many of the finest shots in Europe. ”

“ Alone in a first-class compartment of the Scotch Express Ralph Wonderson, athlete and sportsman, journeyed northwards for the grouse hunting. He was surrounded by gun-cases and cartridge-belts, and, as the train flashed through the summer landscape, he reflected pleasantly that "Grey Bob," his magnificent hunter, was snugly ensconced in the horse-box adjoining. ”

“ DIARY OF A KAISER.
Sunday.—To-day has witnessed another triumph for the high-souled German army. Ten Belgian villages have been burnt. Some of the inhabitants have been also burnt; the rest have been driven out to starve. This will teach Belgium not to build villages in the way of a possible German advance. General von Schweinehund was in command of the of the noble German column. Have telegraphed my supreme eme congratulations and have conferred upon him the Iron Cross. How splendidly God is behaving in these days. ”

“ Sinclair tried to temporize.
"But wait a bit," he said. "Can't the servants manage to consume—"
"The servants breakfast long before you are up, Mr. Sinclair," my wife reminded him.
"It's perfectly simple," said I, suddenly taking the floor; "I think it an admirable idea, the essence of good citizenship. What we have got to do is to declare our appetites overnight so that every man eats the food he has booked and we make a clean sweep. Book me for two eggs and a kipper."
"Sorry there are no kippers tomorrow," said my wife. "Boiled eggs, bacon and kidneys and mushrooms." ”

“ I said.
"Well, isn't a cigarette-case as eligible as a camera?" he said. "Its needs are, I consider, even greater. Presumably this gift is meant to facilitate my smoking, but an empty cigarette-case offers me nothing to smoke—it implies the heavy responsibility on an already overburdened man of keeping it filled. Now, suppose you complete the gift, as I did Jane's, by at least a year's endowment?" ”

“ Denham said."
"I see," said Mary miserably.
"I don't quite understand what we're in the world for," said poor John, "or what the world's for at all. But I suppose the great thing is that—that good ideas should live and bad ideas should die... I haven't done much for good ideas so far, I'm not the sort of person who could... just one out of thousands of others... But I could do something for good ideas out there. I could help beat the bad idea of War... ”

“ Every Saturday morning a man comes to my bank to cash a cheque for a hundred and fifty pounds (How he gets through all that money in a week I have never had the courage to ask him.) Every Saturday morning I come to my bank to cash a cheque for—well, whatever it happens to be, you know.
The trouble is that we nearly always coincide; only the other man always seems to coincide first. ”

“ All Belgian and French universities are to be at once bombarded and burnt for failing to recognise the superiority of German intellect. Have just read noble book by Professor Lumpenthor, who proves that Cæsar, Hannibal, Alexander, Homer, Virgil, Shakspeare, Napoleon, Attila and Genghis Khan were all Germans. He seems to fear that we modern Germans are too merciful. ”

“ THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT ENDOWMENT SCHEME.
Jane's uncle—Jane is my daughter—came to me one day and said, "What do you think of my giving Jane a camera for her birthday? Wouldn't she be pleased? The advertisement says, 'Any babe can do it,' and she'll be ten."
"I have no doubt she'd be delighted," I said, "but there's a but. If you give it you must endow it."
"What do you mean?" said Jane's uncle.
"The camera's the least part of it," I replied. "For half-a-guinea you can cast a camera upon the world, but have you given a moment's consideration to that camera's means of support? ”

“ I said, "you're not allowing for deaths and bad eggs."
"Oh yes, I am," she said; "I've only allowed half the eggs to become chickens."
"You'd never make a company promoter," I said.
"I'm going to be a hospital nurse, thank you, Daddy," she said with her nose in the air. "Do come and see Evargeline's family."
So we strolled into the garden and down to the poultry run, taking the multiplication sums with us.
Evangeline, the optimist, was busy scratching up the more or less kindly fruits of the earth for her family and didn't make the slightest sign of recognition, though I coughed twice. ”

“ Most of us have the treasure-trove instinct sufficiently developed to like reading about a young man who picks up Gainsboroughs for a tenner, or unearths lost masterpieces of Turner on a clue supplied by an old letter. ”

“ The Deutsche Tageszeitung says:—
"Our present war with England shall not be done by halves; it is no war to be stopped by notice, but by a proper settlement. Otherwise the peace we all desire would be both rotten and dangerous." ”

“ You will walk steadily backwards for two miles. If you refuse I shall shoot Lady Margaret. And I shall shoot to kill."
His nerves as steady as steel in this desperate crisis, Ralph swiftly analysed the situation. If he backed away as commanded, Sir Earnest would then mount Grey Bob and ride off with Lady Margaret, and Ralph realised that even her death was preferable to this. If he made a dash at the assailant, the latter, to save his own skin, would almost certainly fire. ”

“ Once, when he appeared in a new lounge suit—the second new one within my knowledge in six months—I could not refrain from remarking on it.
"One has to dress up to a silver cigarette-case, old fellow," he said, and the subject was dismissed.
The year was on the point of expiring. One day I way talking with Jane's uncle and another man at the Club. The other man offered me a cigarette, and to my amazement passed uncle over with these words:—
"No good offering you one, I know, poor old chap. When is your doctor going to give you a reprieve?" ”

“ I asked, "are the figures relating to this lot of Evangeline's?"
"Here," she said, "under 'E.' Five chickens. I've allowed five to die, though I'm sure they wouldn't if they knew what they're wanted for."
"I'm afraid you'll have to work it all out again."
"Why?"
"Look here," I said, "five chickens, and each going to lay at least enough eggs to sit on, and half of the sitting to mature, as it were; that sounds fair enough, but not more than three of this lot will lay eggs at all."
"Oh! why ever not?" she said.
"Nature's limitations," I explained. "Seven of them are cockerels." ”

“ It's too cold-blooded. Besides, I fluctuate like anything."
"Come on," said I. "You fellows are simply trying to shirk the thing. I declare two eggs, no bacon and three mushrooms, assuming an average size for mushrooms. One cup and a half of coffee. Three lumps in all."
"Well, that's a fairly good lead," said Sinclair. "I propose to double you on mushrooms and I should like to be put down for a kidney. What about you, Henry?"
"Nothing but one rasher of bacon, please," said Henry meekly. "I am never hungry in the morning and I have always wanted to know how much bacon there is in a rasher. ”

“ I began to wish that the cigarette-cases had perished, but after his kindness to Jane I could hardly refuse.
"Well, what would it cost?" I said. "That's easily reckoned," said Jane's uncle. "Say I smoke on an average fifteen cigarettes a day—that 's 105 a week—that's——— Have you a piece of paper?"
It worked out at just under 5,500 cigarettes a year. At 8s. a hundred, twenty guineas would just cover the year's endowment. It seemed out of all proportion to the cost of the case.
"It's a good deal more than Jane's camera got," I protested. ”

“ I only know one man in the regiment that Phyllis's brother adorns, and his name is Captain Nares. Even supposing that the name had been censored in Leo's letter, there could be no doubt as to the identity of the person to whom the writer referred.
So far as I could see there was one of two possibilities. Either Phyllis was involuntarily developing the Censor habit, or she was treating the exigencies of correspondence in war-time with a levity that in a future wife I firmly deprecated. Humour of this kind is all very well in its place ”

“ As Premier reminded House this afternoon, three weeks ago he declared desire that no party in any quarter of the House should gain advantage or should suffer prejudice from the temporary suspension of domestic controversy. When this was resumed, matters should be taken up and proceeded with exactly at the point and under the conditions at which they were left. The main feature of such conditions was the avowed intention of the Government to place the two Bills on Statute Book, hope being cherished of arrival at friendly settlement by means of Amending Bill. ”

“ German Kaiser. "Let us prey."
WAR DECLARATIONS.
"No, I don't mean that at all," said my wife hastily. "You quite misunderstand me. Of course everyone is to have as much, quite as much, food as he wants."
"Stop a bit. Does that mean as much as he likes?" I asked.
"Or as much as his system requires?" suggested the Reverend Henry.
"Or as much as he can contain?" demanded Sinclair. "It may seem to be a fine point but I think we ought to have it cleared up."
The hostess resumed: "Everyone is to have as much as he likes, certainly. Of course he is. We are not going to be inhospitable. ”

“ H. H. Davies to regard seriously the love of a man for a maid. North of the river and west of Temple Bar it is the intrigues of the highly compromised middle-aged which are supposed to be most worthy of attention on the stage. But Mr. Davies (luckily) is never afraid of being young. So he starts us off with a picture of Geoffrey in the clutches of drink and drugs just because Valentine has jilted him. True that when Valentine is finally married to another man Geoffrey is still in love with her, and receives her at midnight in his rooms ”

“ Woman have no heads for the law. I could not make Jane see that to buy a dormouse with the funds of the camera would be an irregular and punishable proceeding. Finally, in despair, I had to promise to ask her uncle if he would recognise the application of one quarter's payment to the purchase of a dormouse. ”

“ She informed her father that she intended to collar some of the alien trade, and had made a good start with her ten chickens, in addition to the three Minorcas, five Cochins, and two Pedigree-unknowns, which were all laying eggs like anything. Another of the Cochins, Maud Eliza, was beginning to get broody, and was being trained for her sitting Marathon on a box of my best golf-balls, and altogether things looked rosy—from Peggy's point of view. ”

“ I replied by return of post that she was really trying to ruin a neutral Denmark, and that to compete with the hated foe she must induce Evangeline, Clara & Co. to turn their attention to laying sausages, the brass collars of electric-light bulbs, toys and small hardware; but, so as not to discourage her, I added that the chickens would make splendid table-decorations later on, and would keep down Williamson's absurd bills for meat. ”