ent, the rumble,
from below, of trains that we might just us well be in doing nothing to
steady our nerves.

But help came--and came from that strange quarter the mighty ocean, from
Chancery Lane so distant! "Might as well," said a burly labourer (or,
for all I know, burly receiver of unemployment dole)--"might as well be
sardines in a tin!"

Straightway we all laughed and viewed our lost time with more serenity.

Later I was in a 'bus in Victoria Street, on its way to the Strand.
As many persons were inside, seated or standing on their own and on
others' feet, as it should be permitted to hold, but still another two
were let in by the harassed conductress.

"I say, Miss," said the inevitable wag, who was one of the standing
passengers, "steady on. We're more than full up already, you know. Do
you take us for sardines?"

And again mirth rocked us.

Finally, that night I was among the stream of humanity which pours down
Villiers Street from the theatres for half-an-hour or so between 10.40
and 11.10, all in some mysterious way to be absorbed into the trains or
the trams and conveyed home. After some desperate struggles on Charing
Cross platform I found myself a suffering unit in yet another dense
throng in a compartment going West; and again, amid delighted merriment,
some one likened us to sardines.

It is not much of a joke, but you will notice that it so seldom fails
that one wonders why any effort is ever made to invent a better.

* * * * *

[Illustration: "I DIDN'T KNOW YOU KNEW THE FUNNY MAN, SIS."

"I DIDN'T. BUT BY THE TIME I DISCOVERED THAT I DIDN'T--WELL, I DID."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

_Madam Constantia_ (LONGMANS) is a war story, but of an earlier and
more picturesque war. A simple tale, I am bound to call it, revolving
entirely round a situation not altogether unknown to fiction, in which
the hero and heroine, being of opposite sides, love and fight one
another simultaneously. Actually the scene is set during the American
struggle for independence, thus providing a sufficiency of pomp and
circumstance in the way of fine uniforms and pretty frocks; and
the protagonists are _Captain Carter_, of the British service, and
_Constantia Wilmer_, daughter of the American who had captured him.
Perhaps you may recall that the identical campaign has already provided
a very similar positi