bank-holiday
trombone-player on Blackpool sands."

From that day till a week ago I never heard Conky or his wife allude to
Uncle Joseph. The memory was too painful. And yet it is impossible to
deny that the experience was salutary. Marjorie is certainly less
overwhelming in her hospitality, and Conky less prodigal of song. And
when Conky told me last week that Uncle Joseph had died and left him
L10,000, I felt that the old man had atoned handsomely for his
unconscious indulgence in a habit for which, after all, a good deal was
to be said.

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

The latest of our novelists to succumb to the temptations of the school
story is Mr. E. F. BENSON; and I am pleased to add that in _David
Blaize_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) he seems to have scored a notable
success. It is the record of a not specially distinguished, but entirely
charming, lad during his career at his private and public schools.
Incidentally, as such records must, it becomes the history of certain
other boys, two especially, and of _David_'s relations with them. It is
this that is the real motive of the book. The friendship between
_Maddox_ and _David_, its dangers and its rewards, seems to me to have
been handled with the rarest delicacy and judgment. The hazards of the
theme are obvious. There have been books in plenty before now that,
essaying to navigate the uncharted seas of schoolboy friendship, have
foundered beneath the waves of sloppiness that are so ready to engulph
them. The more credit then to Mr. BENSON for bringing his barque
triumphantly to harbour. To drop metaphor, the captious or the forgetful
may call the whole sentimental--as if one could write about boys and
leave out what is the greatest common factor of the race. But the
sentiment is never mawkish. There is indeed an atmosphere of clean,
fresh-smelling youth about the book that is vastly refreshing.
Friendship and games make up the matter of it; there is nothing that I
could repeat by way of plot; but if you care for a close and sympathetic
study of boyhood at its happiest here is the book for your money.
Finally I may mention that, though in sympathetic studies of boyhood the
pedagogue receives as a rule scant courtesy, Mr. BENSON'S masters are
(with one unimportant exception) such delightful persons that I can only
hope that they are actual and not imaginary portraits.

*