yond.

In place of the squalor that stretches
Unchanged o'er the realist's page,
The sunshine that glows in your Sketches
Is potent our griefs to assuage;
And when, on your mettlesome charger,
Full tilt against reason you go,
Your Lunacy's finer and Larger
Than any I know.

The faults of ephemeral fiction,
Exotic, erotic or smart,
The vice of delirious diction,
The latest excesses of Art--
You flay in felicitous fashion,
With dexterous choice of your tools,
A scourge for unsavoury passion,
A hammer for fools.

And yet, though so freakish and dashing,
You are not the slave of your fun,
For there's nobody better at lashing
The crimes and the cant of the Hun;
Anyhow, I'd be proud as a peacock
To have it inscribed on my tomb:
"He followed the footsteps of LEACOCK
In banishing gloom."

* * * * *

From an Indian clerk's letter to his employer:--

"I am glad that the War is progressing very favourably for the
Allies. We long for the day when, according to Lord Curzon's
saying, 'The Bengal Lancers will petrol the streets of Berlin.'"

Quite the right spirit.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Awe-struck Tommy (from the trenches)._
"LOOK, BILL--SOLDIERS!"]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

It may be as well for me to confess at once the humiliating fact
that I am not, and never have been, an Etonian. If that be a serious
disqualification for life in general, how much more serious must it
be for the particular task of reviewing a book which is of Eton all
compact, a book, for example, like _Memories of Eton Sixty Years Ago_,
by A.C. AINGER, with contributions from N.G. LYTTELTON and JOHN MURRAY
(MURRAY). For I have never been "up to" anybody; I have never been
present at "absence"; I have no real understanding of the difference
between a "tutor" and a "dame"; I call a "_p[oe]na_" by the plebeian
name of "imposition"; and, until I had read Mr. AINGERS'S book, I had
never heard of the verb "to brosier" or the noun substantive "bever."
Altogether my condition is most deplorable. Yet there are some
alleviations in my lot, and one of them has been the reading of this
delightful book. I found it most interesting, and can easily imagine
how Etonians will be absorbed in it, for it will rev