In view of the decision to which the L.C.C. came last week an old lady writes to say that she hopes we shall not have the disgusting spectacle of Living Statues begging in the streets.

It is reported that a liner is to be built a foot longer than the last Cunarder. Once more we ask, Why not build one which will reach from England to America?

Close on the news that some valuable

jewellery has been returned to its owner by a burglar comes a report that the GERMAN EMPEROR is contemplating the restoration of Kiao Chau to China.

Old Cabdriver (at the end of a somewhat heated argument). "I KNOW WOT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU THE WIND'S GOT IN THAT 'OLE IN YER 'EAD AND SET YER TONGUE WAGGIN'."

A correspondent has written to The Autres pays, autres mœurs. The Times begging that dogs may be allowed band of the Coldstream Guards has to travel on the Tubes. The shape of been fêted at Boulogne. Dispatches these new tunnels would certainly seem from Adrianople report that a Bulgarian to be especially adapted to the conband of six men has been destroyed venience of dachshunds. by Turkish troops. The Concert of Europe is not yet perfect.

It is refreshing to find that classical study is not neglected by the modern newspaper man. The Daily News informed its readers that the stolen Ascot Cup was "oviform or egg-shaped."

How to Brighten Cricket.
The New Method of Scoring, with
personal notes on each player:-
"Mr. G. G. Napier, no tout 10."-Daily Mail.

Old Metaphors brought up-to-date. "THE speaker maintained that Friday's The L.C.C. steamboats have been ceremony was to be the pill which was attracting fewer customers than ever, to gild over the rotten fabric."-Jersey and it is suggested that with a view to! Evening Post.

Meteorological Note.

On the other side of the line a youthful batsman of sixteen summers was engaged in making a name for himself... Hill was at that time 18 years old."-Captain.

HE seems to have missed a brace of summers. Probably in England.

THE striking success of Sir HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN'S motion has not been without its effect abroad. We read in The Standard that:

According to a correspondent of El Liberal, a resolution in Portugal is imminent."

SPORTSMEN I HAVE KNOWN. AMONGST those who render faithful service and display a peculiar type of virtues engendered and produced by their occupation, the Boatmen of our great rowing clubs must always have a conspicuous and an honourable place. It has been my privilege in the course, of a considerable space of life devoted to oarsmanship to meet many of these Boatmen on terms of cordial friendship. For me they have repaired boats, rasped oars, adjusted stretchers, or altered the height of riggers. Together we have launched the frail shells of cedar which are known as racing boats. I have listened to their criticism of crews and their varied memories of a past which always outshone in its brilliancy the feeble glimmer of the shifting present, and having thus passed many pleasant hours in their company I am qualified, I believe, to write of them as they deserve.

to depress every rigger in a boat he would have obeyed and
would have carried out the task with unquestioning alacrity
and assured punctuality. Had he been told so to arrange
the ship that she might be propelled stern-first through the
water he might have smiled in wonder, but it would not
have occurred to him to doubt the wisdom of the President
or coach who gave the order. He himself was a good water-
man and could send a sculling boat along. It was one of
the proudest memories of his later life that he had once, in
the early eighties, been matched to scull his old friend and
rival ToM TIMS from Putney to Chiswick during the practice
of the two University crews. The veterans entered their
boats in gallant style and started with great determination.
Toм made the pace at first, but BILL soon drew up to him
and passed him, and finally secured a victory over the greater
bulk and rotundity of the Oxford man. The defeat of the
Cambridge crew a few days later, while it consoled Toм,
plunged BILL into an abyss of depression.
ASPLEN is dead, but TOM TIMS still lives, and duly performs
the arduous duties of his post. The
death of ASPLEN greatly affected him.
When he heard of it he was suffer-
ing from illness, and I have heard
him say that the news seemed to
him to carry a warning that his own
end was at hand. 'I thought," he
said, "that my call had come when
I heard that poor old BILL was gone.'
Fortunately, however, though many
years have passed, he is still hale
and vigorous. He has seen count-
less generations of rowing men follow
one another upon the Isis, but he
has never been known to forget a
face even long after its owner
had put off the joyousness and the
beardlessness of youth, and had
assumed instead the whiskers and
the baldness of middle age. Το
every President in turn he has com-
municated his patent plan for win-
ning, or going as near as may be
to winning, the toss for stations
immediately before the Putney race.
"Don't you call, Sir," he has been
heard to say, for if you call
Heads and it turn up Tails
you're done. Let him call, and
then if he calls Tails and it turns
up Heads, where is he?" He is

Amongst these Boatmen two must have their special niche in the temple of aquatic fame. I speak of the late WILLIAM ASPLEN, who for innumerable years acted as Boatman to the Cambridge University Boat Club, and of Toм TIMS, who is still, as it were, the living embodiment of all that a Boatman to the Oxford University Boat Club could ever hope to be. Since I first met BILL ASPLEN I have twice fulfilled the grande mortalis ævi spatium of which the Roman historian speaks. Indeed, it is close upon thirty-three years since I first set eyes upon his pleasant face, as he went about his work in the yard adjoining the poor shed in which the Cambridge Club then housed its boats. He wore a light-blue ribbon round his battered straw hat, and freshmen looked upon him with an awe for which his genial manners and his affable address gave but little warrant. Later on I came to know him well, and, though reverence perhaps diminished, affection certainly increased in the process. I do not think he had ever been very young. Imagination indeed could not well conceive him other than he was, and age as it advanced seemed to make no difference to him. He could always combine two apparently contradictory articles of belief, for he was convinced | impressed with the belief that the fact of calling halves a that the men and the crews of the past were not to man's power of choice, and thus places him in an inferior be equalled, and he was at the same time fundamentally position in respect of the coin. One other function also he sure that the crew with which he happened at the accomplishes with great regularity. He may be seen laborimoment to be engaged was in material and in capacity for ously blowing air through an india-rubber tube into the performance the very best that had ever sat in a boat. He canvassed bows of the boat just before she is launched for was bred and born in Cambridge, and it was said of him the race. Thus he renders her more buoyant. As he that in the course of a youth, the existence of which I have justly observes, the Oxford eight has never sunk in the race. presumed to doubt, he had been a quick man of his temper In the O.U.B.C. Barge at Oxford may be seen a tiny little and a ready man of his hands. He neither denied nor did zephyr, religiously preserved against the attacks of time and he admit the impeachment that he had once knocked down the washerwoman. Far back in the past century it clothed a brawling opponent and had been compelled to suffer the boyish chest of TIMs. It is a pleasant pastime to compare (pecuniarily, but not, I think, in his liberty) as a consequence. it with the massive bulk to which that chest has now attained. Certainly when I knew him there was about him a sunny and unchanging good humour which endeared him both to those whom he served and to all his colleagues in the many boatyards of the sluggish Cam. He was the most cheerful man I ever saw.

SHAKSPEARE IN GALWAY.
"STAND NOT UPON THE ORDER OF YOUR GOING."

As a workman, too, he was admirable. No job ever came amiss to him. If he had been asked to raise every seat and

66

Yet, whatever else about him may have changed, the spirits and the faith of the man are still those of a boy. Long service is his, and loyal devotion to the club that employs him. He has the friendship of all those to whom at one time or another he has ministered. Long may he live to enjoy it, and such other rewards as a life well spent in the handling of boats may afford him.

Anxious Daughter (to parent playing in the Fathers' match). "DON'T FORGET, FATHER, TO STAND WELL IN FRONT OF THE WICKET, BECAUSE

IF YOU GET OUT FOR A DUCK LEG BEFORE IT WON'T LOOK QUITE SO BAD ON THE SCORE-BOOK!"

Let them leave the way clear when their But him I'm hustling to the ditch.

SELF-TREATMENT PREFERRED.

SURGEON C.-B. "A VERY BAD CASE. I SEE NOTHING FOR IT BUT AN OPERATION."

HIS LORDSHIP. "VERY KIND OF YOU, I'M SURE, TO OFFER YOUR SERVICES; BUT I THOUGHT OF TAKING A LITTLE PRESCRIPTION OF MY OWN."

[The Lords have appointed a Committee to consider the best means of reforming their own House. Lord ROSEBERY is its Chairman.]