The goal being, I take it, the final death of Home Rule. And now comes the wonderful peroration, in which the whole great adventure is brought to its dignified and eloquent climax. It runs into twenty-three stanzas, of which I will give you the last two without comment-- Freedom is what we labour for, Freedom, it is our right; We have no wish for bloody war, But, if we must, we'll fight. This is our message sent to him, The dark Dictator's tool-- Whatever happens, sink or swim, We Will Not Have Home Rule! There, Charles! I challenge you to produce anything approaching that from all your boasted London dailies. Yours, Robert. * * * * * "A villager will always tell the difference between a good coin and a bad one, but he cannot tell the difference between a bad coin and a good one."--_Pioneer._ He must try to enlarge his mind. * * * * * [Illustration: _Perspiring Sportsman (who has been riding in fourteen-stone point-to-point race)._ "Well, thank goodness that's the last of the season!" _Friend_. "Thought you liked it." _Perspiring Sportsman_. "Yes, if it weren't for the wasting you've got to do to ride the weight?"] * * * * * OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. (_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._) Doubtless you will think, as I did at first, that the title of _The Priceless Thing_ (Stanley Paul) has reference to love or something intense like that. Far from it. Not in fifty guesses would you be likely to discover that its real meaning is an autograph of the late William Shakspeare. One knew already that Mrs. Maud Stepney Rawson could write a vigorous and bustling tale. If I have a complaint to make against _The Priceless Thing_ it is indeed that it suffers from some superfluity of plot, and what approaches a plethora of villains, real or supposed. For this reason it is a story more than usually hard to condense fairly into a paragraph. Briefly, however, the P. T., which was the peculiar treasure of the noble line of _Annerslie_, lived in a case in the library of their ancestral home. The heroine, _Anstice_, a relation of the Family, was employed by My Lord as librarian. When I tell you, moreover, that _Anstice_ had run away from her own father on finding that he was an expert manufacturer of literary forgeries, and that her circle of friends included an American blackmailer, a curiosity dealer and a mad Italian who was even better at the forgery business than her own father, you will perceive that the poor girl was likely to find her situation "some job." I could not begin to tell you what really happened. Towards the end there had been so much mystery, and the story had become such a palimpsest of forged signatures, that I myself knew no more than _Lord Annerslie_ in which to believe. But I think we both had the upholding conviction that an affair of this kind was bound to come out all right in the end.