ndon City.

"Our walls stand grey and stately;
Our city gates stand high;
Our lords spend wide and greatly;
Our dames go sweeping by;
Our heavy-laden barges
Float down the quiet flood
Where on the pleasant marges
Gay flowers bloom and bud.
Oh, there's no place like London City,
And I'm its crown," said None-so-pretty.

The fairies heard her boasting,
And that they cannot bear;
So off they went a-posting
For charms to bind her there.
They wove their spells around her,
The maiden pink and white;
With magic fast they bound her,
And flowers sprang to sight
All white and pink, called None-so-pretty,
The Pride of dusty London City.

* * * * *

"A City pigeon swooped down suddenly out of nowhere and all but took
the cap off a bricklayer at the rate of forty miles an hour."--_Daily
Paper._

It will be observed that the speed was that of the bird and not the
bricklayer.

* * * * *

"At ---- Church, on Monday last, a very interesting wedding was
solemnised, the contracting parties being Mr. Richard ----, eldest son
of Mr. and Mrs. ----, and a bouquet of pink carnations."--_Welsh
Paper._

There has been nothing like this since GILBERT wrote of--

"An attachment _a la_ Plato
For a bashful young potato."

* * * * *

[Illustration: "WOT YER MEAN PHOTOGRAPHIN' MY WIFE? I SAW YER."

"YOU'RE QUITE MISTAKEN; I--I WOULDN'T DO SUCH A THING."

"WOT YER MEAN--_WOULDN'T_? SHE'S THE BEST-LOOKIN' WOMAN ON THE BEACH."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.)

Miss SHEILA KAYE-SMITH continues to be the chronicler and brief abstractor
of Sussex country life. Her latest story, _Green Apple Harvest_ (CASSELL),
may lack the brilliant focus of _Tamarisk Town_, but it is more genuine and
of the soil. There indeed you have the dominant quality of this tale of
three farming brothers. Never was a book more redolent of earth; hardly
(and I mean this as a compliment) will you close it without an instinctive
impulse to wipe your boots. The brothers are _Jim_, the eldest, hereditary
master of the great farm of Bodingmares; _Clem_, the youngest, living
contentedly in the position of his brother's labourer; and _Bob_, the
central character, whose dark and changing fortunes make the mat