THREE, AND YE JUIST GIE HER BACK ONE. MAN, IT'S AN AWFU' EASY
LANGUAGE."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

Mr. BELLOC can, I am sure, write entertainingly about any phase of the
French Revolution on his head, and in _The Last Days of the French
Monarchy_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL) he has apparently done so. I cannot think
it will add to his reputation. It will be something if it doesn't hurt
it. He has taken a short story, and by a process of dextrous padding
and the practice of a method, which is becoming an obsession with him,
of going deep into the obvious with much industry and circumstance, he
has contrived, with the addition of a number of plates--some of
singular irrelevance--a fattish book. Even ignorant persons like this
Learned Clerk are apt to be chagrined by being so obviously written
down to. On the other hand, naturally, an author who knows his
intriguing subject so well and drives so forceful a pen cannot fail to
be interesting. The historian seems most concerned to prove, by his
familiar and plausible method of going over the ground "in the same
season, in the same weather, after the same rains, in the same mist,"
that the Prussian charge by Valmy Mill miscarried only because the
infantry got bogged in marsh that looked like stubble. So now we know!

* * * * *

From the list of books already published by Mr. CECIL HEADLAM it is
easy to see that he is by choice a topographer rather than a novelist.
Indeed the fact is made sufficiently obvious to the reader of _Red
Screes_ (SMITH, ELDER). Its sub-title is _A Romance of Lakeland_, and
so strongly developed is the place-spirit in its author that he is
constantly breaking the rather tenuous thread of his story to
introduce long descriptions of Cumberland scenery and people, and as
this is most easily done by sending his chief characters for walks in
the districts that Mr. HEADLAM wishes to talk about the result is that
I seldom read a novel in which the protagonists were kept so sternly
on the move. But I am far from saying that the result is not happy
enough, especially for those readers who already know and love the
neighbourhood that the author handles so well. As for the tale, that,
as I have hinted, is nothing to keep you awake o' nights. There is a
millionaire in it, with one daughter (whom he hates) and a very
unpleasant secretary, who loves the