And Solomon spoke in a drunken voice:
"Let cymbals sound! Let the people rejoice!"

So the Jew-boys looked on the wine that was red
In the Vine and the Star and the Saracen's Head.

The One-Legged Man

[wold) PROPPED on a stick he viewed the August weald; Squat orchard trees and oasts with painted cowls; A homely, tangled hedge, a corn-stooked field, With sound of barking dogs and farmyard fowls.

And he'd come home again to find it more
Desirable than ever it was before.

How right it seemed that he should reach the span
Of comfortable years allowed to man!
Splendid to eat and sleep and choose a wife,
Safe with his wound, a citizen of life.

He hobbled blithely through the garden gate,

And thought: "Thank God they had to amputate!"

Enemies

He stood alone in some queer sunless place
Where Armageddon ends; perhaps he longed
For days he might have lived; but his young face
Gazed forth untroubled: and suddenly there thronged
Round him the hulking Germans that I shot
When for his death my brooding rage was hot.

He stared at them, half-wondering; and then
They told him how I'd killed them for his sake,—
Those patient, stupid, sullen ghosts of men:
And still there seemed no answer he could make.
At last he turned and smiled, and all was well
Because his face could lead them out of hell.

The Tombstone-Maker

HE primmed his loose red mouth, and leaned his

Against a sorrowing angel's breast, and said:

head

"You'd think so much bereavement would have made "Unusual big demands upon my trade.

"The War comes cruel hard on some poor folk"Unless the fighting stops I'll soon be broke."

He eyed the Cemetery across the road-
"There's scores of bodies out abroad, this while,
"That should be here by rights; they little know'd
"How they'd get buried in such wretched style."

I told him, with a sympathetic grin,

That Germans boil dead soldiers down for fat;
And he was horrified. "What shameful sin!
"O sir, that Christian men should come to that!"

Arms and the Man

YOUNG Cræsus went to pay his call

On Colonel Sawbones, Caxton Hall:

And, though his wound was healed and mended, He hoped he'd get his leave extended.

The waiting-room was dark and bare.
He eyed a neat-framed notice there
Above the fireplace hung to show
Disabled heroes where to go

For arms and legs; with scale of price,
And words of dignified advice

How officers could get them free.

Elbow or shoulder, hip or knee,—
Two arms, two legs, though all were lost,
They'd be restored him free of cost.

Then a Girl-Guide looked in to say,
"Will Captain Croesus come this way?"