_First Native._ "AY; AN' SO BE THEY BELGIANS AN' ROOSHIANS." _Second Native._ "AY; AN' SO BE THEY ALLYS. OI DUNNO WHERE THEY COME FROM, JAHN, BUT THEY BE DEVILS FOR FIGHTIN'." * * * * * OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. (_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._) Why is it that novels with scamp-heroes are so much more interesting than the conventional kind? _Bellamy_ (METHUEN) is a case in point, for the central character, who gives his name to it, is about as worthless an object, rightly-considered, as one need wish to meet. He steals and lies and poses; he betrays most of his friends; and throughout a varied life he only really cares for one person--himself. Yet Miss ELINOR MORDAUNT never seems to have any difficulty in making us share _Bellamy's_ delight in his own conscienceless career. Perhaps it is this very delight that does the trick. Charlatan as he is, and worse, _Bellamy_ is always so attractively amused at the success of his impostures that it becomes impossible to avoid an answering grin. It was not a little courageous of Miss MORDAUNT to write a story about a hero from the Five Towns district; but, though this may look like trespass upon the preserves of a brother novelist, _Bellamy_ is Miss MORDAUNT'S very own. I have the feeling that she enjoyed writing about him--a feeling that always makes for pleasure in reading. Perhaps of all his manifold phases I liked best his _role_ of assistant necromancer at a kind of psychical beauty parlour. There is some shrewd hitting here, which is vastly well done. But none of the adventures of _Bellamy_ should be skipped. I am sorry to add that the copy supplied me for review did not apparently credit me with this view, as it ruthlessly omitted some forty of what I am persuaded were most agreeable pages. The fact that it so far relented as to go back about ten, and repeat a chapter I had already read, did little to console me. I could have better spared part of a duller book. * * * * *