was a-going
to arst of us, because to-day was the last day for sending in. So I
advised him to chance it with Nebsbury, which happens to be eight
miles off and possesses a High Street; and then I went back to
Francesca and told her that Glumgold advised Nebsbury--which was
cowardly, but one can't spend a lifetime over a fiddle-headed document
like that. Anyhow, we folded it up and posted it, and we've heard
nothing since.

R.C.L.

* * * * *

[Illustration: ECHOES OF THE AIR-RAIDS.

_First Souvenir-hunter_. "FOUND ANYFINK, 'ERB?"

_Second ditto_. "NO; BUT THAT'LL BE ALL RIGHT. THEY'RE SURE TO COME
AGAIN TERMORRER NIGHT."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

Not for a great while have I met a story at once so moving and so
simply made as _Summer_ (MACMILLAN). Of course at this time the art
of EDITH WHARTON is no new discovery; but to my thinking she has never
done better work than this tale of a New England village, and the
wakening to love of the girl who was drowsing away her youth there.
It is all, as I say, so simple, and written with such apparent economy
of effort, that only afterwards does the amazing cleverness of Mrs.
WHARTON'S method impress itself upon the reader. _Charity Royall_ was
a waif, of worse than ambiguous parentage, brought up in a community
where her passionate and violently sensitive nature was stifled. Two
men loved her--dour middle-aged Lawyer _Royall_, whose house she kept,
and _Lucius Harney_, the young visitor from the city, the fairy-prince
of poor _Charity's_ one great romance, through whom came tragedy. You
see already the whole stark simplicity of the theme. What I cannot
convey to you is that secret of Mrs. WHARTON'S that enables her by
some exquisitely right word or phrase so to illuminate a scene that
you see it as though by an inspiration of your own, and feel that
thus and thus did the thing in fact happen. There are episodes in
_Summer_--for example the Fourth of July firework evening, or the
wildly macabre scene of the night funeral on the mountain--that seem
to me to come as near perfection in their telling as anything I am
ever likely to read, and when you have enjoyed them for yourself I
fancy you will be inclined to join me in very sincere gratitude for
work of such rare quality.

* * * * *

Those who admired (which is the same a