_R.M._ Well, Sir, if you _arsk_ me, I dunno as another arf dozen'll do
you any 'arm--but, o'course, that's just as _you_ feel about it.
[_Captain CROPPER endeavours to extract encouragement from
this Delphic response._
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE RUSSIAN WOLF AND THE HEBREW LAMB.
(_After a well-known Picture._)]
* * * * *
TIT-WILLOW.
(_A NEW VERSION._)
["Last year I fed the tomtits with a cocoanut, suspended on a
stick outside my window, and they came greedily. This year I
forgot all about it, but, hearing a clamour in a fuchsia-bush
outside my study window ... I found myself besieged by an
army of tomtits ... Was it memory, or association of ideas, or
both?"--_Rev. F.G. Montague Powell, in the "Spectator."_]
On a bush in a garden a little Tomtit
Sang "Willow, Tit-willow, Tit-willow!"
And I said to him, "Dicky-bird, why do you sit
Singing 'Willow, Tit-willow, Tit-willow'?"
"I've had nothing to eat for three days," he replied,
"Though in searching for berries I've gone far and wide,
And I feel a pain here in my little inside,
O Willow, Tit-willow, Tit-willow!"
Now his poor little cheeks had grown haggard and thin,
O Willow, Tit-willow, Tit-willow!
And his self was a shadow of what it had been,
O Willow, Tit-willow, Tit-willow!
"By the kind Mr.
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