Illustration: _Burglar (to his mate)._ "SEE WOT PEOPLE GITS FUR BEIN' UNPATRIOTIC! IT'S A PURE TREAT TO GIVE THESE 'ERE GOLD 'OARDERS A LESSON." * * * * * Sad Case of Cannibalism by Robert. "Milton scarcely heard her. He was too intent upon wondering how Robert came to be dining tete-a-tete with the one-time Adeline Goodrin, and--if the truth be told--upon that amazing woman, herself." _"Daily Mail" feuilleton._ * * * * * From _Chemistry of Plant Products_:-- "D'Arbamont concludes that starch, and presumably also sugar, may or may not be essential for the formation of chlorophyll." We came to the same conclusion long ago. * * * * * Illustration: _Excited Veteran._ "THE ALLIES WILL PROBABLY REACH HERE AND THEN SWEEP ROUND WITH A SUDDEN FLANKING MOVEMENT." * * * * * OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. (_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._) The heroine of _Alberta and the Others_ (SIDGWICK AND JACKSON) was the eldest of an orphaned family of girls and boys who were finding life a little boring in an English village; and when an unexpected legacy made her mistress of a couple of town lots in a place called Sunshine, in Western Canada, nothing would content her but to emigrate with the whole tribe--reinforced by a delightful _Aunt Mary_ and an animal known as the Meritorious Cat--to the Land of Promise. The book is the history of how they got on there. Naturally, from the circumstances of their start and the giddy altitude of _Alberta's_ hopes, you will be prepared for its being, to some extent at least, a story of disillusion. Miss MADGE S. SMITH, who wrote it, says that it is all true; and indeed there is much in the tale that stamps it as the outcome of personal experience. This being so, I could wish that her attitude in the matter had been a little less uncompromisingly English. In many ways the language and general outlook of the daughter of an Oxford don will no doubt differ considerably from that of a Canadian-born inhabitant of a prairie township; but that is no good reason for assuming an air of patronage. However, this defect, though it exists, is not so pronounced as to spoil one's enjoyment of an entertaining record, written, as the publishers say, "in high spirits throughout," and having, I fancy, just this much fiction mingled with its obvious fact, that it ends with a general pairing off and the prospect of three weddings--which seems, as _Lady Bracknell_ observed in a similar connection, "a number considerably above the average that statistics have laid down for our guidance." But at least it is the _amende honorable_ to the Land of Promise. * * * * *