able
and patriotic desire to reduce expenses will be met. I may repeat that
your consideration for your house-masters, who perform useful and
necessary functions, has gratified me."

Number 11 study that night was barricaded against all comers. A howling
crowd in the corridor was demanding the blood of Chapman major.

"Didn't I tell you to keep on ruining Dabs?" said Dyson. "Now the old
beast will be wallowing in Exchequer Bonds bought out of our sausages
and suet."

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Engineer-Storekeeper (dictating)._ "Two gross fire
bricks."

_Stoker (writing)._ "Two gross fire b--r--i--x."

_Engineer-Storekeeper._ "'B--r--i--x' don't spell bricks."

_Stoker._ "Well, wot _do_ it spell?"]

* * * * *

Daylight-Saving.

"Cook-General Wanted ... Comfortable home ... No washing or
windows."

_Morning Paper._

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Irish Sentry (placed, to enforce an order, on road which
is shelled by enemy whenever used by a body of men)._ "Ye'll have to
wait, Sorr, for somewan else to go wid ye before ye can pass along
here."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.)

Even those who have overloaded their shelves with books about the War
must, I think, find a place for _From Mons to Ypres with French_, by
FREDERIC COLEMAN (SAMPSON LOW). It is a most remarkably vivid and varied
record of the writer's experiences, set down in a very simple and direct
style, without the least effort at flummery and high-falutin. I can
speak for one reader at any rate on whom it made a very deep impression.
Mr. COLEMAN is, by his own account, an American and an automobilist.
Those who get his book will judge him, by the unadorned account of what
he did, to be a man of great courage and modesty, with an imperturbable
shrewdness and a humour proof against all dangers and disappointments.
Driving, as he did, a motor-car for the British Headquarters, and in
particular for General DE LISLE, he saw as much fighting as any man need
wish for and had magnificent opportunities of forming a judgment on the
effects of German shell-fire. There is a pathetic photograph of his car
hit by a shell outside Messines. I have spoken of the simplicity and
directness of Mr. COLEMAN'S style; he himself describes his book as a
plain tale. It has, indeed, that ki