NOTES AND COMMENTS.

A young man in the Jardin des Plantes asked if the boa constrictor tied himself in a knot because he wanted to remember something.

A feature of watering-place hotels next summer will be "sun-parlors," built of glass and exposed to the rays of the sun on all sides.

A recent vote among the parents of the students of Pennsylvania University shows a large majority in favor of compulsory attendance at chapel.

More than half of the institutions in the United States which profess to give university education and confer degrees now admit women on equal terms with male students.

The faculty of Cornell have indefinitely suspended five of the leaders in the late freshmen kidnapping, and required them to leave town at once. Forty others are yet to be dealt with.

Baltimore has received a gift of $1,000,000 for the establishment of a free public library. The donor is Enoch Pratt, one of the trustees of the Peabody Institute. A building to cost $225,000 and to hold 200,000 volumes is being erected. The city receives the money to use as it chooses, but in return binds itself forever to pay an annuity of $50,000 for the support of this library.

There appeared in a recent number of the Bicycling World an article in which it was claimed that the bicycle was a practical road machine for all seasons of the year. The writer gave his experience in winter riding, an asserted that he found very little difficulty in making fair time on the snow. Winter riding on a bicycle may be enjoyable to some, but we must confess a weakness for a sleigh. Numb fingers, slippery going, and frequent and unavoidable falls and dismounts do not seem to us the most enjoyable features of bicycling. Winter, in our opinion, is the time to give the bicycle a rest and to be contented with the old-fashioned sleigh. Bicycling in the proper seasons is a most healthful exercise and a very fascinating manner of progression, but in the winter it is entirely out of place, and seems like having picnics in January. If winter riding be practicable, the Columbia Bicycle Co. should immediately establish an agency in Greenland, and introduce their machine among the Esquimaux.

WALT TO OSCAR.O you!

Scoopist of British shekels, grasper of future dollars,

I hail you. You are on deck, brace up, immense.

I am a little that way myself, but not so much.

I thought I understood fancy advertising. I was mistaken.

I crawl, I weaken, I ignominiously flunk;

The aesthetic scoops the erratic every time.

I sing about an interesting subject. I rave about myself.

I am an interesting subject;

So are you, for I am you and you are I;

We play our hands for all they're worth. We are ourselves,

You in the cultured, I in the sensual style.

We are.

[Boston Commercial Bulletin.