them.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Prospective Mistress._ "ARE YOU A CONSISTENTLY EARLY
RISER?"

_Maid._ "NOT ARF! WHY, MUM, IN MY LAST PLACE THE MASTER'S PET NAME FOR ME
WAS 'THE EARLY WORM.'"]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

_Rescue_ (DENT) is a story in the authentic manner of Mr. JOSEPH CONRAD at
his unapproachable best. If it is true, as one has heard, that the book was
begun twenty-five years ago and resumed lately, this explains but does
nothing to minimize a fact upon which we can all congratulate ourselves.
The setting is the shallow seas of the Malay coast, where _Lingard_, an
adventurer (most typically CONRAD) whose passion in life is love for his
brig, has pledged himself to aid an exiled young Rajah in the recovery of
his rights. At the last moment however, when his plans are at point of
action, the whole scheme is thwarted by the stranding of a private yacht
containing certain persons whose rescue (complicated by his sudden
subjection to the woman of the party) eventually involves _Lingard_ in the
loss of fortune and credit. Perhaps you can suppose what Mr. CONRAD makes
of a theme so congenial; how the tale moves under his hand in what was once
well called that "smoky magnificence" of atmosphere, just permitting the
reader to observe at any moment so much and no more of its direction. Of
the style it would now be superfluous to speak. It has been given to Mr.
CONRAD, working in what is originally a foreign medium, to use it with a
dignity unsurpassed by any of our native craftsmen. Such phrases as (of the
prudent mate remonstrating with _Lingard_): "What he really wanted was to
have his existence left intact, for his own cherishing and pride;" or
again, "The situation was too complicated to be entrusted to a cynical or
shameless hope," give one the quick pleasure of words so delicately and
deftly used as to seem newly coined. _Rescue_, in short, is probably the
greatest novel of the year, one by which its author has again enriched our
literature with work of profound and moving quality.

* * * * *

I was inclined to flatter myself that nothing in the plot of _The Silver
Tea-shop_ (STANLEY PAUL) could possibly take me by surprise, but I found
towards the end that Miss E. EVERETT GREEN had contrived to slip in the
real villain all unsuspected while I, as she mean