A Papuan Plaint.

By H.J.E.S.

I OBJECT to burglars and villains of every sort being pictured with pro jecting jaws, in popular papers. I have a projecting jaw.

On many mornings my wife missed things from the pantry. I work far into the night. She ever suspected me until this week. Someone sent her a parcel of literature of the lighter sort.

A big proportion of the pictures in cluded faces of gentlemen plate-and jewel-removers, ordinary thieves, stage sinners, and what not. All had pio jecting jaws!

My wife cut out all such pictures and pasted them over a print of beau tiful—I mean a beautiful print of Aphrodite, that adorned a calendar.

Vile vandalism, I call it! She hung the horror over the pastry-box in the pantry. I hate to think there was any inference ...

It all started at afternoon-tea. Some people came unexpectedly. My wife told the maid to rifle the bun-bin, and while we were chatting with the visitors I saw the girl moving agitatedly out side the door and looking plaintively at me. I got leave on the plea of ur gent private affairs and met her in the kitchen. Her face was blanched and brown. As she is a Papuan, the latter colour is accounted for.

“Velepara,” she cried, “Logeapara will be very angry. There is nothing for the people to eat.”

As a matter of fact, I had consumed all the cakes the previous night. I must say, in fairness to myself, it was the first time I had done that on the eve of a visitation. How was I to know there was a boat on the way?

We have visitors only once in many moons.

“I know the girl is innocent,” I ex plained to my wife; “ but the rations have . . . er . . . run out.”

My wife does get annoyed sometimes, and this was one of them. After the visitors had sailed away with biscuit crumbs on their shirt front, my wife held another enquiry. It was the fiercest in my memory, but, as no one would get hurt and I am an awful coward before women, I did not offer myself for sentence.

Then we opened the mail-bag or visitors had brought, and there were those pictures! My wife seemed to put two and two together ... in fact, there were twenty-two or so. There they were with their projecting jaws —and there was I, with mine.

I must be fair. My wife is a perfect lady, so never has called me a liar in the ordinary four-letter sound of the word, as it were; but her casual refer ence to the similarity of my jaw with those of the pictures placed over the pastry-box in the pantry seemed singu larly suggestive.

The matter recalls a painful incident in the life of a friend of mine. He is unfortunate enough to be a parson with what might be termed a proboscis. He was visiting a home one day and a little boy there kept gazing at the parson’s nose. The mother watched her offspring anxiously, and at last said, “Don’t forget what I told you, Johnnie! ”

“It’s all right, Mum,” replied the boy, “I’m not going to say anything, I’m just looking at it!”