A PLEASURE “SMACK”.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 December 1921, Page 11

A PLEASURE “SMACK”.

Too old to hang my stocking up, I felt depressed, because The years had disillusioned my Ideas of Santa Claus. No compensating gifts had come From far across the sea No longed-for ship was coming home, No freighted Argosy. And yet there was fast drawing near Had I but understood, A trig and fearless privateer To change my pensive mood. For ’neath the mistletoe so high My ship came sailing back, And watted on a loving sigh Was borne a pleasure “smack.” A RIPPING CHRISTMAS. With the noiseless tread typical of the. feline, Thomas Cat, as dawn was breaking, crept slowly to the family water bucket, and there surveyed his miserable reflection. “Great heavens!” he exclaimed. “One ear gone!” “And one eye closed!” he gasped. Y’et a third time he looked. “Thirteen gashes,” he counted, “part of lower jaw missing, and nothing left of whiskers but stumps.” Then he sighed. “My word,” he murmured dreamuy, “what a dickens of a glorious Christinas Eve I must have had!” A TONGUE TES’X. One Christmas Eve many years ago, a police station in .Scotland was overstocked with semi-drunks. So the officer in charge bethought him of a way ot letting off the least tipsy ones, and tested them with these words. “The Leith police disnusseth us.”