away to our rivals.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Counsel._ "PRISONER IS THE MAN YOU SAW COMMIT THE
THEFT?"

_Witness (a bookmaker)._ "YES, SIR."

_Counsel._ "YOU SWEAR ON YOUR OATH THAT PRISONER IS THE MAN?"

_Witness._ "YES, SIR."

_Sporting Judge._ "ARE YOU PREPARED TO GIVE ME FIVE TO TWO ON THE
PRISONER BEING THE MAN?"

_Witness._ "AH, I'M SORRY, ME LORD, BUT I'M TAKING A HOLIDAY TO-DAY.
NOTHING DOING."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

ELLEN MELICENT COBDEN can certainly not be accused of writing too
hurriedly. I don't know how many years it is since, as "MILES AMBER,"
she captured my admiration with that wonderful first novel, _Wistons_;
and now here is her second, _Sylvia Saxon_ (UNWIN), only just
appearing. I may say at once that it entirely confirms my impression
that she is a writer of very real and original gifts. _Sylvia Saxon_
is not a pleasant book. It is hard, more than a little bitter, and
deliberately unsympathetic in treatment. But it is grimly real.
_Sylvia_ herself is a character that lives, and her mother, Rachel,
almost eclipses her in this same quality of tragic vitality. The
whole tale is a tragedy of empty and meaningless lives passed in
an atmosphere of too much money and too little significance. The
"society" of a Northern manufacturing plutocracy, the display and
rivalry, the marriages between the enriched families, the absence of
any standard except wealth--all these things are set down with
the minute realism that must come, I am sure, of intimate personal
knowledge. _Sylvia_ is the offspring of one such family, and mated to
the decadent heir of another. Her tragedy is that too late she meets a
man whom she supposes capable of giving her the fuller, more complete
life for which she has always ignorantly yearned. Then there is
_Anne_, the penniless girl, hired as a child to be a playfellow for
_Sylvia_, who herself loves the same man, and dies when his
dawning affection is ruthlessly swept away from her by the dominant
personality of _Sylvia_. A tale, one might call it, of unhappy women;
not made the less grim by the fact that the man for whom they fought
is shown as wholly unworthy of such emotion. A powerful, disturbing
and highly original story.

* * * * *

"SAKI" has been now for a number of years a great delight to me, and
his last w