* * * * * "The vexed question, 'What is a new-laid egg?' is at present confronting a committee of poultry experts."--_Daily Telegraph._ The Committee should invite a hen to sit on it. * * * * * An "under-cut":-- "Earl Beatty is setting an example in hustle at the Admiralty. Photographed yesterday hurrying to lunch."--_Daily Paper._ His Lordship's example is superfluous. The Admiralty has nothing to learn about hurrying to lunch. * * * * * [Illustration: _Mistress._ "CAN YOU EXPLAIN HOW IT IS, JANE, THAT WHENEVER I COME INTO THE KITCHEN I ALWAYS FIND YOU READING?" _Jane._ "I THINK IT MUST BE THEM RUBBER 'EELS YOU WEARS, MA'AM."] * * * * * OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. (_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._) Mr. JOHN HASTINGS TURNER, who had already to his credit a play, a novel and various successful revues, has now produced, in _A Place in the World_ (CASSELL), what is, I understand, to some extent a fictional version of his play. How far this may be so I am uncertain (not having seen the play), but I am by no means uncertain that it makes here a wholly admirable story, one moreover that shows a notable advance in Mr. TURNER'S art as novelist, being firmer in touch and generally more matured than anything he has yet written. The plot concerns the adventures, spiritual and other, of _Madame Iris Iranovna_, pampered cosmopolitan beauty, when fate or her own egotistical whim had dumped her as a temporary dweller in the semi-detached villas of suburbia. The theme, you observe, is one that might excuse the wildest farce, since the effect of _Iris_ upon her unfamiliar surroundings was naturally devastating. Mr. TURNER however has chosen the more ambitious path of high comedy. In _Iris_ herself, and even more in the kindly old vicar who so unexpectedly confronts her with her own weapons of wit and worldly wisdom, he has drawn two characters of genuine and moving humanity. I shall not tell you how the conflict (essential to real comedy) works itself out, nor after what fashion the empty brilliance of _Iris_ is humiliated and transformed. If I have a criticism of Mr. TURNER'S method, it is that, as with _Bunthorne_, a "tendency to soliloquy" is growing upon him which will need watching. But he clothes his reflections pleasantly enough. Already known as what the old lady called "an agreeable rattlesnake," he has now proved himself a story-teller of conspicuous promise. * * * * *