rch me out,
however far I may have wandered from the battlefield meanwhile, and,
saluting ironically, will hand me an envelope marked "Urgent, secret,
confidential, personal, private." The contents will be a piece of news
and some orders, and all that Fortune will have had to do with it
will be to attach a forwarding slip, "Passed to you, please, for your
information and necessary action." The news will be that for everyone
else the War is over, and the infantry and the rest of them will take
over forthwith my present circumstances, being free to revel in the
trams and the mosquitoes and the nasty colds to their hearts' delight.
The orders will be that for me the War is about to begin again in
grim earnest, and that to-morrow at dawn I take over and defend
till further notice, and against all the most noisy and loathsome
inventions that man can devise, that sector of the trenches which
extends from the Swiss frontier to the sea.

When that day comes I shall be too busy (taking cover) to have leisure
to write to you. Meanwhile I shall still be in touch with life from
time to time and will pass on to you such scraps as come my way. Yours
ever, Henry.

* * * * *

"The India Office goes to Mr. Montagu."--_The Star._

Mahomet had to go to the Mountain, but Mr. Montagu is more fortunate.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Bill_. "I dessay some women can do men's work. But
they'll never git men's wages."

_Joe_ (_much married_). "Wotchermean--_never?_ They always 'ave!"]

* * * * *

OUR MIGHTY PENMEN.

BY A LITERARY EXPERT.

The House of Boffin announces a revised edition of Mr. Elbert Pitts's
_Final Words on Religion_, under the title of _Antepenultimate
Words on Religion_. As Mr. Pitts observes in his arresting Preface,
"Finality, in a time of upheaval, is a relative term, and I hope,
at intervals of six months or so, to publish my penultimate,
quasi-ultimate and paulo-post-ultimate views on the vital beliefs
which underlie the fantastic superstructure of dogmatic theology."
The new work will be illustrated with three portraits of the author
by Mr. Marcellus Thom, taken at various stages of the composition of
the work.

* * * * *

Mr. Pitts has also completed a new novel entitled _The Bounder of
Genius_, and has kindly furnished us with a brief outline of its
contents. The hero, who start