"per Mrs. So-and-So" invariably contributed the largest amount? Is
it not also on record that at the reception which followed the public
opening of this wing, when the collecting ladies advanced to deposit
their collections at the feet of presiding Royalty, it was the Poor Lady
Bountiful who brought the largest, the most beautifully embroidered and
the fullest purse? It was felt on all hands, that "the dear Princess"
had only done what an English Princess might properly be expected to do,
when she afterwards, under the inspiration of the cunning Vicar,
showered a few words of golden public praise into the palpitating bosom
of the champion purse-bearer.

And thus her time is spent. When she is not organising a refuge she is
setting on its legs a dinner fund, when she has exhausted the patience
of her friends on behalf of her particular tame widow, she can always
begin afresh with a poverty-stricken refugee, and if the delights of the
ordinary subscription-card should ever pall, she can fly for relaxation
to the seductive method of the snowball, which conceals under a cloak of
geometrical progression and accuracy, the most comprehensive uncertainty
in its results. One painful incident in her career must be chronicled.
Fired by her example, but without her knowledge, a friend of hers from
whom she is accustomed to solicit subscriptions, steps down to do battle
on her own account in the charitable arena. And thus, when next the Poor
Lady Bountiful makes an appeal in this quarter on behalf of a Siberian
Count, whom she declares to be quite a gentleman in his own country, she
is met by the declaration, that further relief is impossible, as her
friend has a Bulgarian of her own to attend to. Thus there is an end of
friendship, and both parties scatter dreadful insinuations as to the
necessity for an audit of accounts. Eventually it happens that a rich
and distant relation of her husband dies, and leaves him unexpectedly an
income of several thousands a-year. Having thus lost all her poverty,
she retires from the fitful fever of charitable life to the serene
enjoyment of a substantial income, and awaits, with a fortitude that no
collector is suffered to disturb, the approach of a non-subscribing and
peaceful old age.

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

_Hard Luck_, by ARTHUR A BECKETT, begins a trifle slow, but works up to
an exciting climax, of which the secret is so profoundly kept, up till
the