"Yes," I said. "I have decided that there is no evidence to prove that he is not a naturalised British bottle. I am going to open him." "You renegade!" Joan cried. "If you dare so much as to loosen his cork I'll--I'll give you an Iron Cross." "I'm desperate," I answered. "I would still open Johann even if you threatened me with the Iron Cross of both the first and the second class." "Coward!" said Joan. "Still, if you're really determined to open him, remember half belongs to me." A moment later I had poured half the contents of Johann--his full name is Johann Maria Farina--into my bath. * * * * * [Illustration: _She_. "THIS BE A TERRIBLE WAR, DOCTOR." _He_. "IT IS, INDEED." _She_. "IT'S A PITY SOMEONE DON'T CATCH THAT THERE OLD KRUGER." _He_. "AH, YOU MEAN THE KAISER." _She_. "AW--CHANGED HIS NAME, HAS HE--DECEITFUL OLD VARMINT?"] * * * * * OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. (_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._) In _The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman_ (MACMILLAN) that impenitent pamphleteer, H. G. WELLS, returns yet again to the intriguing subject of marriage, and in a vein something nearer orthodoxy. Not, certainly, that worthy stubborn orthodoxy of accepted unquestioned doctrine, or that sleeker variety of middle-aged souls that were once young, now too tired or bored to go on asking questions, but an orthodoxy rather that is honest enough to revise on the evidence earlier judgments as too cocksure and hasty. _Sir Isaac Harman_ was a tea-shop magnate, and a very pestilent and primitive cad who caught his wife young and poor and battered her into reluctant surrender by a stormy wooing, whose very sincerity and abandonment were but a frantic expression of his dominating egotism and acquisitiveness. Wooing and winning, thinks this simple ignoble knight, is a thing done once and for all. Remains merely obedience in very plain and absolute terms on the part of lady to lord, obedience which, in the last resort, can be exacted by withholding supplies--not so uncommon a form of blackmail as it suits the dominant sex to imagine. _Lady Harman's_ emancipation does not take the conventionally unconventional form, for some deeper reason, I think, than that her sententious friend and would-be lover, _George Brumley_, could not altogether escape her gentle contempt; indeed, she recognises _Sir Isaac's_ claims upon her for duty and gratitude in a way which modern high-spirited priestesses of progress would scarcely approve. She fights merely for a limit to the proprietorship, for the right to a separate individuality, the right to be useful in a wider sphere (a phrase that stands for so much that is good and less good). Mr. WELLS has realised this gracious, shy and beautiful personality with a fine skill. It is no mean feat. He might so easily have made a dear mild ghost. And oh! if ladies of influence who regiment their inferiors in orderly philanthropic schemes had some of the wisdom and