gs that my intelligence could appreciate in this lavish
entertainment, but also of the other things that I can never hope to
understand.

O. S.

* * * * *

Commercial Candour.

"Good Boots . . . . . . 25/-
No Better. . . . . . . 37/6."

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Speaker (endeavouring to cultivate a patriotic spirit
in the young)._ "AND NOW, CHILDREN, IF YOU SAW OUR GLORIOUS FLAG
WAVING TRIUMPHANTLY OVER THE BATTLE-FIELD, WHAT WOULD YOU THINK?
(_Prolonged pause_) COME, COME, WHAT WOULD YOU ---- WELL, MY LITTLE
MAN, WHAT WOULD YOU THINK?"

_Small Boy._ "PLEASE, ZUR, THE WIND WERE BLOWIN'."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

"I remember, I remember...." Still on every side echoes the poet's
cry, while scarce a publisher but can prove that the thoughts of age
make long, long books. Certainly not the shortest of these, but among
the most readable, is _A Medley of Memories_ (ARNOLD), in which the
Right Rev. Sir DAVID HUNTER-BLAIR has embodied the recollections of
his very active career as Benedictine monk and a leading figure in the
world of British Catholicism. Eton, Oxford, Rome, and (of course) his
own famous monastery at Fort Augustus, are the chief scenes of it;
and about them all Sir DAVID talks vividly, even brilliantly. I am not
saying that all this pleasant garrulity would not have been the
better for the blue pencil, especially in those chapters in which the
writer's memory dwells almost to excess upon the births, marriages,
deaths and dinner-parties of the orthodox Peerage. Elsewhere, however,
Sir DAVID finds occasion in plenty for the exercise of a wit so
dextrously handled that often his thrust is delivered before you have
realized that the rapier has left its sheath. I had marked a score of
examples for quotation (and now have space for none) and twice as many
good stories. In the Oxford recollections it was pleasant to renew my
own lively memories of a certain notorious lecture by Mr. WALTER WALSH
on Ritualistic Societies, when violence was narrowly averted by the
tactful chairmanship of the present LORD CHANCELLOR--a lecture from
which (as Mr. BELLOC observed at the time) "each member of the large
audience departed confirmed and strengthened in whatever convictions
he might previously have entertained." I sincerely hope that Sir DAVID
has yet in store for