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Answers to Correspondents

E. M. M-ck-r-sy: So you think every man ought to be allowed to speak for five years? Ah, well, it's only honest to practice what one preaches.

P. W. B-rb-dge: (I) As you say, housewives often polish stoves when they are warm—a pernicious practice. Our own skivvy suggests a liberal diet of ice-cream as an efficacious remedy; you might knock out a paragraph for the "Evening Post" on the subject. (2) See reply to Henry Bodley above.

Rev. C-mpt-n: (a) Re your little sketch "Me and the Lunatic," regret unsuitable, rather too much both of "me" and "lunatic." Now, if you would only send us along one or two of those little stories your old friend Sir Charles Bowen told you after dinner! (b) We suggest "à voleur voleur et demi."

M. G-ldsb-r—gh: We cannot too strongly condemn your flippant attitude towards one of the "grand old men" of the English legal system. "This fellow Doc" is old enough to be your—uncle.

B-rne: We don't care for any of the terms you used. When addressing a meeting of the Debating Society you should avoid being too familiar, and yet not be too stand-offish. "Chaps" and "fellows" both err on the one side, and "gentlemen" on the other. Now, what's wrong with that grand old English word "gents." ?

V-rn-n : The song you ask about appears in the 1911 Capping Carnival Programme. See verse II.:

"No tooth could keep a man awake Through hours of P-ck-n's vague conjectures." The anti-Opium Association might take the matter up as a sideline.

Prof. P-ck-n: The quotation is from the famous soliloquy in Hamlet, Act III., Scene I, from the sixth to the tenth line.

As a matter of fact, however, the person you mention assures us that his sleep was quite dreamless—the nightmare came before and after,