[Illustration: _Engineer-Storekeeper (dictating)._ "Two gross fire bricks." _Stoker (writing)._ "Two gross fire b--r--i--x." _Engineer-Storekeeper._ "'B--r--i--x' don't spell bricks." _Stoker._ "Well, wot _do_ it spell?"] * * * * * Daylight-Saving. "Cook-General Wanted ... Comfortable home ... No washing or windows." _Morning Paper._ * * * * * [Illustration: _Irish Sentry (placed, to enforce an order, on road which is shelled by enemy whenever used by a body of men)._ "Ye'll have to wait, Sorr, for somewan else to go wid ye before ye can pass along here."] * * * * * OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. (_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.) Even those who have overloaded their shelves with books about the War must, I think, find a place for _From Mons to Ypres with French_, by FREDERIC COLEMAN (SAMPSON LOW). It is a most remarkably vivid and varied record of the writer's experiences, set down in a very simple and direct style, without the least effort at flummery and high-falutin. I can speak for one reader at any rate on whom it made a very deep impression. Mr. COLEMAN is, by his own account, an American and an automobilist. Those who get his book will judge him, by the unadorned account of what he did, to be a man of great courage and modesty, with an imperturbable shrewdness and a humour proof against all dangers and disappointments. Driving, as he did, a motor-car for the British Headquarters, and in particular for General DE LISLE, he saw as much fighting as any man need wish for and had magnificent opportunities of forming a judgment on the effects of German shell-fire. There is a pathetic photograph of his car hit by a shell outside Messines. I have spoken of the simplicity and directness of Mr. COLEMAN'S style; he himself describes his book as a plain tale. It has, indeed, that kind of plainness which in dealing with enterprises of great pith and moment has a peculiar brilliancy of its own. The account, for instance, of the Cambrai--Le Cateau battle, with all its vicissitudes, is extraordinarily graphic and interesting, and the story of the charge of some fifty men of the 9th Lancers against more than twice their number of German Dragoons of the Guard stirs the blood as with the sound of a trumpet. Delightful too is the narrative of how Major BRIDGES found two hundred completely exhausted stragglers seated despairingly upon the pavement of the square at St. Quentin, and how by means of a penny whistle and a toy drum he got them to move and brought them eventually to Roye and safety. Altogether a capital book. * * * * *