Chapter C: F. S

* * * * *

"The Premier's principal speech was made in St. Andrew's Hall,
where he was presented with the Freedam of the
City."--_Liverpool Post and Mercury._

Which he promptly passed on to the enemy.

* * * * *

"Skilled non-workers all over the Union have for some time been
in great demand, and enough of them are not available at the
present time."--_Rand Daily Mail_.

There are still a few that the old country could spare.

* * * * *

"Rhode Island Red, 200 year old pullets, laying, 5s.
each."--_Nottingham Guardian_.

We fancy it must have been one of these veterans that we met at dinner the other night.

* * * * *

* * * * *

ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

_Monday, July 2nd._--On the Finance Bill Mr. BONAR LAW exhibited a conciliatory disposition; and, indignantly disclaiming the character of a kill-joy, made several welcome concessions to the taxpayer. The late increase in the tobacco duty is to be halved, so that the modest smoker may hope to fill his pipe for a penny less per ounce. This hope, of course, is dependent upon the decision of the all-powerful Trust.

The Entertainments Tax also is to be modified, chiefly in its higher regions. Intimately connected with this question is the case of the "deadhead," argued with the zeal that is according to knowledge by that eminent playwright, Mr. HEMMERDE, who knows all about the free-list and its services in "enabling the management to keep the house properly dressed"--this refers, of course, to the front of the house--during the doubtful first weeks of a new play.

Mr. HOGGE was in his place again. It had been reported that, consequent upon a hasty pledge to remain in Liverpool until his candidate was returned, he was now doomed for ever to wander an unquiet sprite upon the banks of Mersey. But he has wisely determined that Parliament must not suffer to please his private whim.

_Tuesday, July 3rd._--The House of Lords was crowded to hear Lord HARDINGE'S comments upon the Mesopotamia Report. Even those critics in the Commons who had declared that a civil servant should not take advantage of his position as a peer to make a personal explanation would, I think, have had no reason to complain of its character. His object was not to defend himself, but to call attention to the splendid services that India had rendered to the Empire during the War in other fields than Mesopotamia. In his own phrase, "India was bled absolutely white during the first few weeks of the War."

When the report comes up for formal discussion Lord CURZON will doubtless have something to say, and will say it in vigorous fashion. To-day, with the air and mien of a highly respectable undertaker, he contented himself with acknowledging Lord HARDINGE'S contribution and deprecated further debate.

Lord ROBERT CECIL, safely back from his travels, does not appear to have kept himself up to date in the interval, for he was ignorant of the refusal of the Allies to allow Greece to set up a republic, although Mr. KING, with his superior sources of information, knows all about it.

At the close of Questions a stalwart young man in khaki advanced to the Table, and, amid the cheers of the Members and to the obvious delight of Lord DERBY, who sat beaming with parental pride in the Peers' Gallery, added the signature "STANLEY" to a roll which has rarely been without that name since "the Rupert of debate" signed it there close on a hundred years ago.

Excess profits provided the theme for some lively speeches to-day. Major HAMILTON did not see why farmers should escape the tax, and instanced the case of a potato-grower who had made ten thousand pounds out of a couple of hundred acres. Several Members connected with the shipping interest protested against the tax. Mr. LEIF-JONES implied that it was more disastrous than the U-boats, and Mr. HOUSTON loudly protested at being represented as a harpy.

By these complaints Mr. BONAR LAW was absolutely unmoved, and for very good reason. He had himself a few thousands invested in shipping, and, as he was getting about fifty per cent., instead of the modest five per cent. which he had anticipated, he had come to the conclusion that even under present conditions the trade was doing pretty well. After this confession of an involuntary profiteer the tax was agreed to. But the farmers, with next year's Budget in view, are praying that the conscientious CHANCELLOR will not invest his surplus profits in land.

_Wednesday, July 4th_.--We all know the ex-poacher-turned-game-keeper. The converse process has taken place in the case of Lord PORTSMOUTH, who, when he ceased to be a Minister of the Crown, became a bitter critic of successive Administrations. His complaints of our blockade policy were frigidly acknowledged by Lord MILNER and hotly resented by Lord LANSDOWNE, upon whom Lord PORTSMOUTH'S ruddy beard always has a provocative effect. It is all very well to talk of being ruthless to neutrals, but if we had adopted the noble lord's policy early in the War would the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes be to-day floating side by side all over London?

Mr. LYNCH'S latest suggestion for the furtherance of his Republican propaganda is that the COMMISSIONER OF WORKS should remove from the streets all statues of deceased monarchs, and replace them by those of great leaders of thought. Sir ALFRED MOND absolutely refused. The worst kings sometimes make the best statues, and he is not prepared to sacrifice JAMES II. from the Admiralty even to put Mr. LYNCH himself on the vacant pedestal.

"P. R." came up smiling for another round, and, having secured the services on this occasion of Mr. ASQUITH as judicious bottle-holder, was expected to make a good fight of it. The EX-PREMIER scouted the notion that the new plan of voting would fill the House with freaks and faddists, a class from which, he hinted, it is not, even under present conditions, entirely immune. But the majority evidently felt that there could not be much amiss with a system which had returned such wise and patriotic persons as themselves to Parliament, and they outed P. R. by 201 to 169.

_Thursday, July 5th_.--It is hardly surprising that the Government has decided not to proceed at present with its great scheme of nationalizing the liquor-traffic. The announcement that, in order to meet the requirements of the harvest-season, the brewers should be allowed to increase the output of beer by one-third, brought a swarm of hornets about the CHANCELLOR'S head. Mr. LEIF-JONES (irreverently known as "Tea-leaf JONES") was horrified at the thought that more grain and sugar should be diverted to this pernicious liquid; Mr. DEVLIN and other champions of the trade were almost equally annoyed because the harvest-beer was to be of a lower specific gravity. The storm of "supplementaries" showed no sign of abating, until the SPEAKER, who rarely fails to find the appropriate phrase, remarked upon "This thirst for information," and so dissolved the House in laughter.

* * * * *

* * * * *

THE WEARY WATCHER.

["Almost exactly a month ago--on May 30th--I advised my readers
to 'Watch Karolyi,' and now I emphasize the advice."--_"The
Clubman" in The Evening Standard, July 2nd_.]

Since very early in the War
My Mentors in the Press
Have never failed in warning me,
By way of S.O.S.,
To keep my eye on So-and-So
In times of storm and stress.

I think that WINSTON was the first
Commended to my gaze,
But very soon I found my eyes--
Tired by the limelight's blaze--
Incapable of following
His strange and devious ways.

I watched the PRESIDENT and thought
(Unjustly) he was canting;
I watched our late PRIME MINISTER
When furious scribes were ranting,
And vigilantly bent my looks
On HARDEN and on BRANTING.

I watched JONESCU, also JONES
(Great KENNEDY) and HUGHES;
I sought illumination from
BILLING'S momentous views;
I watched Freemasons, Socialists,
And Salonica Jews.

And lately with emotions which
Transcend the power of rhymes
I've scanned with reverential eye
Those highly-favoured climes
Ennobled by the presence of
The ruler of the T***s.

I've glued my eye on seer and sage,
On Mecca's brave Sherif;
I've fastened it on what's-his-name,
The famed Albanian chief,
Till, wearying of the watcher's task,
At length I crave relief.

So when I'm bidden at this stage
To start the game anew
And keep KAROLYI constantly
And carefully in view,
I think I'm wholly justified
In answering, "Nah Poo!"

* * * * *

AN EQUIVOCAL COMPLIMENT.

"Dundee," said one of its leading citizens at the luncheon,
"will stand by Mr. Churchill to the last letter."--_Daily
Chronicle_.

Evidently "l" itself would not sever Mr. CHURCHILL'S connection with his old friends.

* * * * *

"$20 buys a horse, good in his wind, if sold at
once."--_Canadian Paper_.

Better not wait for his second wind.

* * * * *

"Coow wanted, first week in August, for Lads Brigade Camp, 120
Lads; must be used to Field kitchens."

It looks like being "bad for the coow."

* * * * *

GEMS FROM THE JUNIORS.

WAR WORK.

War work is what wimmen do when their arnt enuff men. Or men do it too sometimes if they are rather old and weak and cant be soldiers, but it is mostly wimmen. Some war work you get paid for but some you don't. It just depens whether you are rich and do V A D or poor and do munisions and things. V A D means something but I forget what. My brother says it means Very Active Damsles but you cant beleive him, and anyway no one talks of damsles nowydays besept in potry. If you are a V A D you have to do as your told just like a soldier but Daddy says they don't do it always, and Mummy says its because they all know a better way than the other persons. But then they don't cost anything so the hospitle people don't mind much. If you do munisions or are a bus conductor you do get paid so you maynt talk so much or you would get sent away. If I dident have to go to scool I would love to be a bus conducter and go rides for nothing.

PHYLLIS BLAKE (age 10).

* * * * *

MY FAVRIT HERO.

A Hero is a man you agmire teribly much or he can be in a book. It is rather dificult to say who is my favrit Hero. There are such a lot of them. Some are lord French genrel Maud King Albert and the VCs. When I was litle I use to think the man who fed the Lions at the zoo was the most bravest man in the wurld but that was ever so long ago before the War. I don't no very much about King Albert and the Others so I wont rite about them. I will rite about lord French. I agmire him most awfuly. I saw him once. He was coming from the camp were my Brother was and he smiled at me quite on perpose. But he doesent no me realy and praps that wont show he is a Hero. But he is one all the same becos he had only a weeny litle Army at the Begining of the war and he helped them to hold tite until more Men came. Or the Germans would have wun. He was only sir then now he is a lord.

MOLLY PRITCHARD (age 7-1/2).

* * * * *

"Berlin declares that the Russians have begun an offensive which extends from the Upper Stokhod to Stanislau, a distance of over 125 metres."--_Daily Telegraph_.

Never believe what Berlin says.

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"MRS. POMEROY'S REPUTATION."

Candour (subacid virtue) compels me to set down that there was nothing very notable or novel about the manipulation, by Messrs. HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL and THOMAS COBB, of the comedy of needless complications entitled _Mrs. Pomeroy's Reputation_. The occasion was chiefly notable for the return of Miss VIOLET VANBRUGH to active service and the welcome she was given by her splendidly loyal following.

_Sir Granville Pomeroy_, childless head of an odious family, has designs on, and for, the son of his brother's pretty widow, he suspecting her to be no fit and proper person to bring up a young _Pomeroy_. And indeed three short months after her husband's death she played bridge, bought a kimono and an expensive carpet, and, it is said, even flirted. Why such recklessness? Well, she discovered a stray daughter of her sainted husband. The irregular mother died, and of course solid _Mrs. Pomeroy_ with the bubble reputation did the handsome thing, and shut her mouth until the fatal moment in the Third Act, when it all came out. Whereby and wherein she discovered that the philandering _Vincent Dampier_ could trust where the solemn _Maurice Randall_ could not. As a side issue the blameless baronet had a little goose to wife, who went to _Dampier's_ Maidenhead bungalow and fell into the river. Elaborate lies to explain quite simple situation to fool anxious to believe the worst. Moral: Never lie to save a little goose.

_Lettice_ MISS LETTICE FAIRFAX. _Georgina_ MISS VIOLET VANBRUGH. _Vincent Dampier_ MR. FRANK ESMOND.]

Miss VIOLET VANBRUGH was patently nervous with her part, a little jerky and restless. She needn't have been. Loyalty would have carried her through a duller play, to say nothing of her charming looks and her queenly way of wearing a beautiful gown. Mr. LOWNE, as the baronet, made effective play with a quite impossible part in a quite futile situation, and held the reflector up to the best Mayfair Cockney with "_Georginar_ explains." He needn't apologise; we know it's true to life! The piece of acting that most cheered me was Mr. GRAHAME HERINGTON as the philanderer's manservant--a very tactful and observant performance. Mr. FRANK ESMOND, the philanderer, seemed ill at ease (partly art but partly nature, I judged, perhaps unjustly). Miss LETTICE FAIRFAX as the little goose was what I believe is known as adequate.

T.

* * * * *

The Food Shortage.

Letter received by a schoolteacher:--

"Dear Miss,--Will you please let Sam out about 20 minutes to 12
o'clock. His Granma is undergoing an operation this morning and
I want Sam for dinner.

Yours truly, Mrs. ----."

* * * * *

From a report of the British Music Convention:--

"'How the British piano can raise the trade to Imperil dignity'
was the subject of an address."--_Scotsman_.

We hope the British piano will resist the temptation.

* * * * *

"Portobello's dressing boxes for lady bathers are practically
ready. There are fifteen boxes at the Band Stand enclosure,
very much resembling ballot boxes in size, shape, and
material."--_Edinburgh Evening Dispatch_.

A happy thought to prepare the new voters for taking the plunge.

* * * * *

"The members of the Cabinet occupied specially reserved seats
in the choir and lectern, where also the Lord Mayor was
seated."--_Scotsman_.

A little hard on the eagle.

* * * * *

From a cinema advertisement:--

"Actual Scenes of our Local Charming Cheddar Valley and the
Beautiful West of England Coast Scenery, also predicting those
Glorious Sunset Scenes that made Sir Alfred Turner
'famous.'"--_West Country Paper_.

The General _will_ be pleased.

* * * * *

"To-day the weather has cleared, but the record according to a
correspondent who, signing himself the 'oldest inhabitant,' has
recently written to the press, stating that in 1178 there was
snow on Simla on 14th April, has now been easily
beaten."--_Rangoon Times_.

The oldest inhabitant, however, is still undefeated.

* * * * *

MY CUTHBERT.

For months I had been chasing Cuthbert. I had a store of withering phrases burning to be poured over his unmentionable head. Last Tuesday my opportunity arrived.

A stranger was sitting comfortably in a deck-chair watching the vacant courts at the tennis club. His keen bronzed face and his obviously athletic body, clothed in white flannel, brought back to me the far days when the sharp clean crack in the adjoining field told of a loose one which had been got away square.

I looked at him again and thought how glad he must be to get into mufti for a few days. I tell you this to show how unprejudiced I was. The only other signs of life were the two super-aborigines who inhabit the croquet patch and detest all other mankind. I approached one of them warily and asked a question. He regarded me with a bilious and suspicious eye.

"Nothing whatever to do with the Army," he snapped, and a Prussian-blue opponent was smacked off into an arid and hoopless waste.

"Ah!" I exclaimed, "then he's only a rabbit after all."

The old thing gave me an unfriendly glance and then missed his hoop badly. I strolled across and sat down beside the newcomer. He smiled at me in a frank and disarming manner.

"What do you think of our courts?" I said by way of a start.

"Top-hole," he replied; "I'm looking forward to some jolly games on 'em."

His obvious disregard of perspective annoyed me. In our village, tennis is now played for hygienic reasons only.

"I'm afraid we can't offer you much of a game," I said. "You see there's a war on, and--but perhaps I can fix up a single for you after tea with old Patterby. I believe he was very hot stuff in the seventies."

"That's very good of you. I expect he'll knock my head off; I'm no use at the game yet."

He spoke as though an endless and blissful period of practice was in front of him.

"I suppose you'll be going back soon?"

"Back where?"

"I mean your leave will be up."

"Oh, I'm out of a job just now."

So it was genuine blatant indifference. I looked round for something with which to slay him.

"I wonder," he said thoughtfully, "if I shall ever find my tennis legs again."

"Have you lost them?" I asked sarcastically.

"I'm afraid so--er--that is, of course, only one of them really."

"Only one of them?" I repeated vaguely.

"Yes, Fritzie got it at Jutland; but these new mark gadgets are top-hole. I can nearly dance the fox-trot with mine already."

He stretched out the gadget in question and patted it affectionately.

The ensuing moment I count as the worst one I have ever known. I had forgotten the Navy. My only excuse is that nowadays, owing to its urgent and unadvertised affairs, we seldom have an opportunity in our village of meeting the Senior Service. But I feel convinced that the irascible Methuselah on the croquet ground was purposely and maliciously guilty of _suppressio veri_.

* * * * *

"OH! 'OW'S THAT, THEN?"

"COS SHE'S ALL MORNIN' AN' ARTERNOON IN A SUGAR CUE, AND 'E'S ALL EVENIN' IN A BEER CUE."]

* * * * *

"Wanted, good Man, to cut, make, and trim
specials."--_Yorkshire Paper._

In Yorkshire the new policeman's lot doesn't seem to be a very happy one.

* * * * *

HEART-TO-HEART TALKS.

(_The German CROWN PRINCE and Ex-King CONSTANTINE._)

_Crown Prince_. My poor old TINO, you are certainly not looking yourself. Have a drink?

_Tino._ No, thank you. I really don't feel up to it.

_C. P._ But that's the moment of all others when you ought to take one. It's good stuff too--bubbly wine out of the cellar of one of my French châteaux. Come, I'll pour you out a glass.

_Tino._ Well, if I must I must (_drinks_). Yes, there's no fault to be found with it.

_C. P._ You're looking better already. Now you can tell me all about it.

_Tino_ (_bitterly_). Oh, there's not much to tell, except that I was lured on by the promise of help, and when the crisis came there was no help, and so I had to go.

_C. P._ (_humming an air_).

And so, and so
He had, he had to go.

_Tino_. I beg your pardon.

_C. P._ Sorry, old man, but the words fitted into the tune so nicely I really couldn't resist trying it. Fire ahead.

_Tino_. I said, I think, that I was promised help.

_C. P._ Yes, you said that all right.

_Tino_. And I added that there was no help when the trouble came.

_C. P._ You said "crisis," not "trouble," but we won't insist on a trifle like that. Who was the rascal who broke his promise and refused to help you?

_Tino_. You know well enough that it was your most gracious father.

_C.P._ What! The ALL-HIGHEST! The INMOSTLY BELOVED! The BEYOND-ALL-POWERFUL! Was it really he? And you believed him, did you? What a cunning old fox it is, to be sure.

_Tino_. You permit yourself to speak very lightly of the AUGUST ONE, who also happens to be your father.

_C. P._ To tell you the truth, I don't take him as seriously as he takes himself. Nobody could.

_Tino_. After what has happened I certainly shall not again. It's entirely owing to him that I've lost my kingdom and that the hateful VENIZELOS is back in Athens and that ALEXANDER is seated on my throne. If your beloved father had only left me alone I should have worried through all right.

_C. P._ I always tell him he tries to do too much, but he's so infatuated with being an Emperor that there's no holding him. You know he's absolutely convinced that he and the Almighty are on special terms of partnership.

_Tino_. I've done a bit myself in that line and I know it doesn't pay.

_C. P._ I daresay I shall do it when my time comes.

_Tino_. If it ever comes.

_C. P._ If it depended on me alone things would go all right. I'm told the people like me, and even the Socialists swear by me.

_Tino_. How can you believe such nonsense? I tried to act on that principle and here I am. And poor Russian NICKIE has had an even worse fall--all through believing he had the people on his side.

_C. P._ Well, but I _know_ they're all fond of me; but my All-Highest One may get knocked out before I get my chance, and may carry me down with him.

_Tino_. Well, we must try to bear up, even if he should go the way NICKIE has gone. In the meantime the War doesn't look particularly promising, does it?

_C. P._ It certainly doesn't; and the Americans will be at our throats directly. Do you know, I never thought very much of HINDENBURG.

_Tino_. I suppose you know someone who is younger and could do it much better.

* * * * *

_Naval Officer (to native)_. "CAN YOU TELL ME WHERE THE GOLF COURSE IS?"

_Native_. "YOU'RE ON THE FIRST GREEN THE NOO. YON'S THE FLAG OWER THE BACK O' THAT STANE."]

* * * * *

"The difference between the classical Arabic and the colloquial
is far greater than that between the Greek of Cicero and the
Greek of, let us say, M. Gounaris."--_The Near East_.

Of course there is also the difference of accent. CICERO spoke Greek with a slight Roman accent and M. GOUNARIS speaks it with a strong German one.

* * * * *

"Two van-loads of shrapnel bullets were stopped by detectives
in Prospect Street, Rotherhithe."--_Morning Paper_.

Tough fellows, these detectives. Stopping a single bullet would put most men out of action.

* * * * *

"Wanted, Cottage or two Double-bedded Rooms, in country river,
20-30 miles from Birmingham, first fortnight of
August."--_Daily Post (Birmingham)_.

So convenient for friends to drop in.

* * * * *

"If the latest air raid does not make the British bull-dog show
his talons in a way that we have up till now wished he might
never do, well nothing will."--_Berwick Journal_.

With his new pedal equipment the British bull-dog should give the German eagle pause.

* * * * *

We are asked to state that a recently published work on _Beds and Hunts_ (METHUEN) is not a companion-volume to _Minor Horrors of War_.

* * * * *

TO THE MEN WHO HAVE DIED FOR ENGLAND.

All ye who fought since England was a name,
Because Her soil was holy in your eyes;
Who heard Her summons and confessed Her claim,
Who flung against a world's time-hallow'd lies
The truth of English freedom--fain to give
Those last lone moments, careless of your pain,
Knowing that only so must England live
And win, by sacrifice, the right to reign--
Be glad, that still the spur of your bequest
Urges your heirs their threefold way along--
The way of Toil that craveth not for rest,
Clear Honour, and stark Will to punish wrong!
The seed ye sow'd God quicken'd with His Breath;
The crop hath ripen'd--lo, there is no death!

* * * * *

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)

_Marmaduke_ (HEINEMANN) has this peculiarity, that the title rôle is by no means its most important or interesting character. Indeed it might with more propriety have been called _Marrion_, since hers is not only the central figure in the plot, but emphatically the one over which Mrs. F. A. Steel has expended most care and affection. Moreover the untimely death of _Marmaduke_ leaves _Marrion_ to carry on the story for several chapters practically single-handed. I am bound to say, however, that at no stage did she get much help from her colleagues, all of whom--the gouty old father and his intriguing wife, the faithful servant, even debonair _Marmaduke_ himself--bear a certain air of familiarity. But if frequent usage has something lessened their vitality, _Marrion_ is a living and credible human being, whether as daughter of a supposed valet, adoring from afar the gay young ensign, or as the unacknowledged wife of _Marmaduke_ and mother of his child, or later as an army nurse amid the horrors of Crimean mismanagement. Later still, when the long arm of coincidence (making a greater stretch than I should have expected under Mrs. Steel's direction) brought _Marrion_ to the bedside of her parent in a hospital tent, and converted her into a Polish princess, I lost a little of my whole-hearted belief in her actuality. There are really two parts to the tale--the Scotch courtship, with its intrigues, frustrated elopements, _et hoc genus omne_; and the scenes, very graphically written, of active service at Varna and Inkerman. I will not pretend that the two parts are specially coherent; but at least Mrs. Steel has given us some exceedingly interesting pictures of a period that our novelists have, on the whole, unaccountably neglected.

* * * * *

_The Experiments of Ganymede Bunn_ (HUTCHINSON) is like to command a wide audience. Its appeal will equally be to the lovers of Irish scenes, to those who affect stories about horses and hunting, and to the countless myriads who are fond of imagining what they would do with an unexpected legacy. It was this last that happened to _Ganymede_, who was left seventeen thousand pounds by an aunt called _Juno_ (the names of this family are not the least demand that Miss Dorothea Conyers makes upon your credulity). My mention of horses and Ireland shows you what he does with his money, and where. It does not, however, indicate the result, which is a happy variant upon what is usual in such cases. You know already, I imagine, the special qualities to be looked for in a tale by Miss Conyers--chief among them a rather baffling inability to lie a straight course. If I may borrow a metaphor from her own favourite theme, she is for ever dashing off on some alluring cross-scent. More important, fortunately, than this is the enjoyment which she clearly has in writing her stories and passes briskly on to the reader. There's a fine tang of the open-air about them, and a smell of saddle-leather, that many persons will consider well worth all the intricacies of your problem-novelists. I had the idea that her honest vulgar little legatee and his speculations as a horse-breeder might make a good subject for a character-comedian; but I suppose the late LORD GEORGE SANGER is the only man who could have produced the right equine cast.

* * * * *

The component elements of _The White Rook_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL) may be summarised in the picturesque argot of Army Ordnance somewhat as follows: Chinamen, inscrutable, complete with mysterious drugs, one; wives, misunderstood, Mark I, one; husbands, unsympathetic (for purposes of assassination only), one; _ingénues_, Mark II, one; heroes, one; squires, brutal, one; murders of sorts, three; ditto, attempted, several. The inscrutable one is responsible for all the murders. Only the merest accident, it seems, prevents him from disposing of the few fortunate characters who survive to the concluding chapters of the story. He narrowly misses the misunderstood wife (now a widow, thanks to his kind offices), and his failure to bag the hero and _ingénue_ (together with a handful of subsidiary characters) is only a matter of minutes. There is almost a false note about the last chapter, in which the Oriental commits suicide before he has completed his grisly task; but it was obviously impossible for anyone in the book to live happily ever after so long as he remained alive. Just how Mr. HARRIS BURLAND and the villainous figment of his lively imagination perform these deeds of dastard-do is not for me to reveal. The publishers modestly claim that in the school of WILKIE COLLINS this author has few rivals. As regards complexity of plot the claim is scarcely substantiated by the volume before me; but if bloodshed be the food of fiction Mr. BURLAND may slay on, secure in his pre-eminence.

* * * * *

The _Rev. Frank Farmer_, hero of Mr. RICHARD MARSH'S _The Deacon's Daughter_ (LONG), was the youthful, good-looking and eloquent Congregationalist minister of the very local town of Brasted, and the ladies of his flock adored him. So earnestly indeed did they adore him that, after he had preached a stirring series of sermons on the evils of gambling, they decided to subscribe and send him for a holiday to Monte Carlo. On his return he was to preach another course of sermons, which "would rouse the national conscience and, with God's blessing, the conscience of all Europe." Possibly you can guess what happened to him; I did, and I am not a good guesser. The _Rev. Frank_ had never been out of England, and he found Monte Carlo inhabited by ladies who made him blush. He could not understand their bold ways, so different from the manner of the Brasted maidens. One of them laid especial siege to him and assured him that he had "_la veine_." At first I am inclined to believe that he thought she was talking of something varicose, but when he understood what she meant he was at her mercy. In short he tried his luck, to the dismay of his conscience but with prodigious benefit to his pocket. His return to Brasted is described with excellent irony.

* * * * *

Mr. WILL IRWIN'S war-book naturally divides itself into two parts, since he was lucky enough to get near the Front both about Verdun during the great attack, and with the Alpini fighting on "the roof of Armageddon." To these brave and picturesque friends of ours he dedicates his study, _The Latin at War_ (CONSTABLE). You must not expect much of that inside information which the author, as an American journalist, must have been sorely tempted to produce. Indeed he has little to offer us that has not been common property of the Correspondents for long enough, and several of his descriptions (his picture of a glacier, for one), given with a rather irritatingly childlike air of new discovery, cannot escape the charge of commonplace. But his reflections, for once in a way the better half of experience, more than make good this defect. His essay on Paris, for instance--"the city of unshed tears"--is something more than interesting, and his analysis of the cause of the successes of the French army, in the face of initial defects of material, even better. The author of _Westward Ho!_, considering the Spanish and English navies of ELIZABETH'S time, found precisely the same contrasted elements of autocracy and brotherliness producing just those results that we find respectively in the German and French forces of to-day--on the one hand a mechanical perfection of command, on the other an informed equality which, somehow, does not make against efficiency whilst fostering individuality. Mr. IRWIN hardly refers to our own Army; but one is thankful to remember that discipline by consent, one of the virtues of true democracy, is not the exclusive tradition of our French allies.

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_A London Posy_ (MILLS AND BOON) is a story with at least an original setting. So far as I know, Miss SOPHIE COLE is the first novelist to group her characters about an actual London house preserved as a memorial to former inhabitants. The house in question is that in Gough Square, where Dr. JOHNSON lived, and two of the chief characters are _George Constant_, the curator, and his sister, to whom the shrine is the most precious object in life ("housemaid to a ghost," one of the other personages rather prettily calls her). It therefore may well be that to ardent devotees of the great lexicographer this story of what might have happened in his house to-day will make a stronger appeal than was the case with me, who (to speak frankly) found it a trifle dull. It might be said, though perhaps unkindly, that Miss COLE looks at life through such feminine eyes that all her characters, male and female, are types of perfect womanhood. In _Denis Laurie_, the gentle essayist and recluse, one might expect to find some feminine attributes; but even the bolder and badder lots, whose task it is to supply the melodramatic relief, struck me as oddly unvirile. But this is only a personal view. Others, as I say, may find this very gentle story of mild loves and two deserted wives a refreshing contrast to the truths, so much stranger and more lurid than any fiction, by which we are surrounded.

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Private Jones. "AND SHE _SAYS_, 'OH! WOT BLINKIN' GREAT EYES YOU 'AVE, GRANDMOTHER!' AND THE WOLF, 'E SAYS, 'ALL THE BETTER TER SEE YER WIV, MY DEAR.'"]

End of Project Gutenberg's Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917, by Various