ngs while flying--for the
same reason that a blue-bottle or an aeroplane
hums."--_Pearson's Weekly_.

So it is not the pilot rubbing his feet together, as we had been taught
to believe.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Uncle_. "BY JOVE, THERE'S A NICE QUIET-LOOKING GIRL JUST
COME IN. WONDER WHO SHE IS." _Niece_. "HAVEN'T THE FOGGIEST. MUST BE
PRE-WAR."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

_The Safety Candle_ (CASSELL) might have been called, but for the fact
that the title has been used already, A Comedy of Age. For this is what
it is--only perhaps less a comedy than a tragedy. _Agnes Tempest_ was
called the Safety Candle, for the ingenious reason that, though
attractive, she burnt nobody's wings. Returning as a middle-aging widow,
after an unhappy wifehood in Africa, she meets on the boat two persons,
_Captain Brangwyn_, a young man, and a girl-mother calling herself
_Antonina Pisa_. Hence the tears. _Brangwyn_ she marries, doubtfully,
half-defiantly, despite the difference in years between them; _Antonina_
is taken as a companion and very soon developes into a sick-nurse. For
in the space between the ship-board engagement and the wedding a railway
accident changes poor _Agnes_ from a still beautiful and active woman to
a nerve-ridden invalid. But in spite of this she and _Brangwyn_ marry;
and (with the much too attractive _Antonina_ always in evidence) you can
guess the result. One odd point; you will hardly get any distance into
Miss E.S. STEVENS' exceedingly well-written story without being struck
by its resemblance to one of Mr. HICHENS' romances. The relative
positions of the members of the triangle, middle-aged wife, young
husband, and girl are exactly those of _The Call of the Blood_; while
the Sicilian setting is identical. But this of course is by no means to
accuse Miss STEVENS of plagiarism; her development of the situation, and
especially the tragedy that resolves it, is both original and
convincing. The end indeed took me wholly unawares, since as a hardened
novel-reader I had naturally been expecting--but read it, and see if you
also are not startled by a refreshing departure from the conventional.

* * * * *

If there still linger in the remoter parts of Cromarty or the Balls Pond
Road certain unsophisticated persons who believe that the stage is one
long g