"Then again his lines could be compared--" Mother snatched her precious up and fled, Pausing once to ask him how he dared Put such notions in um's little head. Her departure mid a storm of kissing Put the lid on further reminiscing. * * * * * Illustration: ALADDIN AND THE MINER'S LAMP. THE GENIE. "I AM THE SLAVE OF THE LAMP. I THINK YOU SUMMONED ME." MR. SMILLIE. "YES, I KNOW. BUT I DIDN'T REALISE YOU'D BE SO UGLY." * * * * * Illustration: "YES, A NICE LITTLE BUS. BUT I SAY, OLD TOP, THE FOOTBOARDS ARE DEUCEDLY LOW. IF YOU RAN OVER ANYONE YOU MIGHT BE CAPSIZED--WHAT?" * * * * * THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY SHOCKER. John Antony Grunch was one of the mildest, most innocent men I ever knew. He had a wife to whom he was devoted with a dog-like devotion; he went to church; he was shy and reserved, and he held a mediocre position in a firm of envelope-makers in the City. But he had a romantic soul, and whenever the public craving for envelopes fell off--and that is seldom--he used to allay his secret passion for danger, devilry and excitement by writing sensational novels. One of these was recently published, and John Antony is now dead. The novel did it. Yet it was a very mild sort of "shocker," about a very ordinary murder. The villain simply slew one of his typists in the counting-house with a sword-umbrella and concealed his guilt by putting her in a pillar-box. But it had "power," and it was very favourably reviewed. One critic said that "the author, who was obviously a woman, had treated with singular delicacy and feeling the ever-urgent problem of female employment in our great industrial centres." Another said that the book was "a brilliant burlesque of the fashionable type of detective fiction." Another wrote that "it was a conscientious analysis of a perplexing phase of agricultural life." John thought that must refer to the page where he had described the allotments at Shepherd's Bush. But he was pleased and surprised by what they said.