But daylong watch the aeroplanes at play,
Or contemplate with secret satisfaction
Your fellow-men proceeding towards the fray;
Your sole solicitude when men report
There is a shovel short,
Or, numbering jealously your rusty store,
Some mouldering rocket, some wet bomb you miss
That was reserved for some ensuing war,
But on no grounds to be employed in this.

For Colonels flatter you, most firm of warders,
For sandbags suppliant, and do no good,
And high Staff officers and priests in orders
In vain beleaguer you for bits of wood,
While I, who have nor signature nor chit,
But badly want a bit,
I only talk to you of these high themes,
Nor stoop to join the sycophantic choir,
Seeing (I trust) my wicked batman, Jeames,
Has meanwhile pinched enough to light my fire.

A.P.H.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Lady_ (_looking out of train on to darkened
platform_). "PORTER, IS THIS EDGWARE ROAD? I CAN'T SEE A THING."

_Porter_ (_with Irish blood in her_). "NOT YET, M'M. EDGWARE ROAD'S
THE STATION BEFORE YOU GETS TO BAKER STHEET."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS._)

"In a few days," says the puff preliminary of _The Coming_ (CHATTO
AND WINDUS), "you and all your friends will be reading and discussing
this most strange and prophetic novel." Perhaps. But what we shall
be saying about it depends largely, I suppose, upon our definition
of the term prophetic; also a little upon our feeling with regard to
good taste and the permissible in fiction. My own contribution will
be a sincere regret that a writer as gifted as Mr. J.C. SNAITH should
have attempted the obviously impossible. His theme, symbolised by a
wrapper-design of three figures silhouetted against a golden sunrise,
is a second advent of the Messiah, embodied in the person of a village
carpenter named (with palpable significance) _John Smith_, whom local
prejudice sends, not inexcusably, to a madhouse, where he dies, after
converting the inmates and instituting a campaign of universal peace.
Frankly, the chief interest of such a wildly fantastic idea lies in
watching just how far Mr. SNAITH can carry it without too flagrant
offence. That his treatment is both sincere and careful hardly lessens
my feeling that the whole attempt is one to be deplored. Humour of the
intentional kind has, of course, no