"
And PETER was right. Ah, how much better would it have been had PETER
remained at school, and not found that sovereign! Had he remained at
school, he would some day have acquired a mass of information that
would have been of immense assistance to him when his father died, and
he succeeded to the paternal broom, and the right of sweep over the
family street-crossing!
* * * * *
[Illustration: TOO MUCH GENIUS.
_Poet_. "OH--A--I ALWAYS WRITE MY POEMS RIGHT OFF, WITHOUT ANY
CORRECTIONS, YOU KNOW, AND SEND THEM STRAIGHT TO THE PRINTER. I NEVER
LOOK AT 'EM A SECOND TIME."
_Critic_. "NO MORE DO YOUR READERS, MY BOY!"]
* * * * *
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.
OSTRICH "FARMING."--We are afraid we cannot give you any sound
or useful information to assist you in your project of keeping an
ostrich-farm in a retired street in Bayswater; but that you should
have already received a consignment of fifty "fine, full-grown birds,"
and managed, with the aid of five railway porters, and all the local
police available, to get them from the van in which they arrived
up two flights of stairs, and locate them temporarily in your back
drawing-room, augurs at least for a good start to your undertaking.
That three should have escaped, and, after severely kicking the Vicar,
who happened to be dining with you, terrified the whole neighbourhood,
and effected an entrance into an adjacent public-house, where they
appear to have done a good deal of damage to the glass and crockery,
upsetting a ten-gallon cask of gin, and frightening the barmaid into
a fit of hysterics, being only finally captured by the device of
getting a coal-sack over their heads, was, after all, but a slight
_contretemps_, and not one to be taken into account when measured
against the grand fact that you have got _all your birds safely lodged
for the night_.
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