I say this as one friend to another and not because I have to wear copper-fastened pajamas.

   I don't mind the copper-fastened pajamas so much, but to wear asphalt neckties and barb-wire suspenders is something which aggravates the spirit.

   At 8 A.M. this morning M. Cornmealski, the Minister of the Department of Armored Breakfasts, reported that he had discovered something suspicious in the dish of peeled prunes.

   We examined the prunes carefully and found them stuffed with free tickets to ride on the Brooklyn Elevated Railroad. We burned the tickets hastily and saved our lives again.

   M. Cornmealski reports that up to date 219 different breakfast foods have been received at the palace kitchen. He says they range all the way from consolidated shavings to perforated sawdust, with here and there some compressed knot-holes.

   In a mad moment yesterday I took the Yale lock off my appetite and ordered up one of those breakfast food samples, but just as I had the spoonful at my lips I remembered the prayer of my youth: "Woodman, spare that tree!" and once more my life was saved.

   Ten minutes ago M. Blackandblueski, the Minister of the Department of Witch Hazel, rushed into my bulkhead compartment.

   "Oxcooski, Your Majesty," said the Minister, "but this morning the cookski was burning a few links of sausage for breakfast. Well, Your Majesty, about two minutes afterwards the cookski and the stove and one side of the palace left in a hurry and went away in a northwesterly direction. We don't expect them back, because the sausage was stuffed with rapid transit material, Your Majesty!"

   Thus it goes all day. Don't you think it is pretty hard lines when I have to make them wash the water on both sides before putting it in the teapot?

   Now I must stop because I hear the humming of the harpoons on the outside. My officers are talking about me again. Farewellski!

   CUSTOMS INSPECTOR. An individual who gets a salary for believing that everybody on the steamboat is a smuggler.

   In order to study briefly the Custom House system as applied to returning travellers let us witness the arrival from abroad of the Secretary of the Treasury.

   Some years before the Secretary went into 

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