Comedy is very popular at railway book-stalls: “My Churchwardens,” by a Vicar, and “My Rectors,” by a Quondam Curate; a weekly pennyworth of mild jokes called “Pick-Me-Up,” and a still cheaper and still milder collection for a half-penny called “Funny Cuts;” an occasional shabby copy of “Innocents Abroad,” which stands as the representative of American humor, and that most mysterious of journals, “Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday,” which always conveys the impression of being exceedingly amusing if one could only understand the fun. Everybody--I mean, of course, everybody who rides in third-class carriages--buys this paper, and studies it soberly, industriously, almost sadly; but I have never yet seen anybody laugh over it. Mrs. Pennell, indeed, with a most heroic devotion to the cause of humor, and a catholic appreciation of its highways and byways, has analyzed Ally Sloper for the benefit of the Known Public which reads the “Contemporary Review,” and claims that he is a modern brother of old-time jesters,--of Pierrot, and Pulcinello, and Pantaleone; reflecting national vices and follies with caustic but good-natured fidelity. “While the cultured of the present generation have been busy proving their powers of imitation,” says Mrs. Pennell, “this unconscious evolution of a popular type has established the pretensions of the people to originality.” But, alas! it is not given to the moderately cultivated to understand such types without a good deal of interpretation; and merely buying and reading the paper are of very little service. Here are the pictures, which I am told are clever; here is the text, which is probably clever, too; but their combined brilliancy conveys no light to my mind. Ally Sloper leading “a local German band” at Tenby, Ally Sloper interviewing distinguished people, may, like Mr. F.’s aunt, be “ingenious and even subtle,” but the key to his subtlety is lacking. As for Tootsie, and The Dook Snook, and Lord Bob, and The Hon. Billy, and all the other members of this interesting family who play their weekly part in the recurring comedy, they would be quite as amusing to the uninitiated reader if they followed the example of the erudite Oxonian, and conversed in “the Ostiak dialect of Tungusian.” By way of contrast, I suppose, the other comic weeklies preserve a simplicity of character which is equaled only by their placid and soothing dullness. It is easy to understand the amount of humor conveyed in such jests as these, both of which are deemed worthy of half-page illustrations. “_Aunt Kate_ (in the park). Tell me, Ethel, when any of the men look at me. “_Little Ethel._ It’s me they look at, aunty. You’re too old.” “Dear friends again. _Madge_ (rather elderly). What do you think of my new hat, Lily? “_Lily._ It’s rather old-fashioned, dear, but it suits you.”