DIPLOMACY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 305, 23 December 1903, Page 6 (Supplement)

DIPLOMACY.

"Papa!" inquired a young hopeful of Somewhere about seven summers, as he looked up from the book he was perusing, "there's a word here which puzzles me'diplomacy*; what does it mean?" '"Diplomacy, my son," and the old man smiled paternally as he said it, "means this: doing or saying precisely the right thing at precisely the right time." "Ah!" retorted the young hopeful, "then I guess I exercised diplomacy last night." "How, my boy?" inquired the fond parent. "Why, I rolled Johnny over into my place jnst before ma came in with the castor oil, and then back again before she came to the other side." SHOT AT LAST. He was rather tall, but his stories were taller, and on his return from South Africa, where he had been serving witl the Imperial Yeomanry, the members of the club to which he belonged were continually pestered and bo (c) red with his remarkable escapes, etc One evening a member decided to have a shot to silence him. "Were you ever wounded V he began. "Well—no, that I never was," the khaki man replied. "Were your* "I once got shot," "You once got shot! Where?" "No matter," said the other, significantly. "But tell us how you got shot?" # "I bought it at the gunsmith's," said he, amid the roars of the other members of the club, whilst the khaki-clad man looked for the door.