d the thunder belloweth overhead,
You would not get me under this roof
For a lakh of the best rupees!

* * * * *

The Magistrate's risen and eke the Sub,
And bicycles homeward spin;
The clerks depart with a shrill hubbub
And the snores of the guard begin;
Ah, lock ye the strong-room sure and fast,
For the night draws down and the day is past;
Masters, I will away to the Club,
For the hour of the cats is in.

H. B.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Batsman._ "I DON'T WANT NONE OF YOUR UNDER'ANDS. BOWL
ANOTHER AN' I TAKES THE BAT 'OME--SEE?"]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

Although _Madeline of the Desert_ (UNWIN) is published in the First
Novel series, it by no means follows that Mr. ARTHUR WEIGALL can be
considered a beginner in authorship, his various activities already
including some volumes on Egyptology that have made for him a wide
circle of appreciative readers. You will therefore be correct in
guessing that the Desert of the title is Egyptian; also that the story
is one in which the setting and the local colour are treated with
expert knowledge and an infectious enthusiasm. Of _Madeline_ herself I
should say at once that nothing in her life, as shown here, became her
like the beginning of it. Her entrance into the tale, arriving out of
the desert to consult the recluse, _Father Gregory_, whose nephew
she afterwards marries, does very strikingly achieve an effect of
personality. _Madeline_ was a product of Port Said and, when we first
meet her, an adventuress of international reputation, or lack of
it. Then _Robin_ rescues, marries and educates her. It was the last
process that started the trouble. _Madeline_ took to education more
readily than a duck to water; and the worst of it was that she was by
no means willing to keep the results and her conclusions therefrom to
herself; indeed she developed the lecturing habit to an extent that
almost (but not quite) ruined her charm. Mr. WEIGALL is so obviously
sincere in all this that, though I cannot exonerate him from a charge
of using _Madeline_ as the mouthpiece of his own sociological and
religious views, I must acknowledge his good intentions, while
deploring what seems to me an artistic error. But, all said, the book
is very far from being ordinary; its quality in the portrayal both of
place and c