The button, dodging my attempts to hide it, Rolled to her very feet and rested there, And when I laid my loving heart beside it She only smiled at that incongruous pair-- Smiled, then in contrite pity for the gloomy Air that I wore of one whose chance is gone, Promised that she would be a sister to me And sew the button on. * * * * * A Test of Endurance. "The dancing will commence at 9 p.m. and conclude at 2 p.m. Anyone still wanting tickets may procure same at the Victoria." _East African Paper._ For ourselves, after seventeen hours' continuous dancing, we shall not want any more tickets. * * * * * From a parish magazine:-- "A nation will not remain virulent which destroys the barriers which protect the Sunday." We are all for protecting the Sunday, but we don't want to remain virulent. It is a terrible dilemma. * * * * * [Illustration: SITUATION: _Burglar caught red-handed._ _Woman._ "THE SORCE O' THE FELLER! 'E PRETENDED TO BE ME 'USBAND AND CALLED OUT, 'IT'S ALL RIGHT, DARLIN'--IT'S ONLY ME.' IT WAS THE WORD 'DARLIN'' WOT GIVE 'IM AWAY."] * * * * * OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. (_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._) In looking at the title-page of _John Seneschal's Margaret_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) no lover of good stories but will be saddened by the reflection that the superscription, "by AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE," is there seen for the last time. The double signature, herald of how much pleasure in the past, is here attached to a cheerfully improbable but well-told tale of the after-war about a returned soldier who was mistaken for his dead fellow-prisoner and hailed as son, heir and _fiance_ by the different members of the welcoming group in the home that wasn't his. The descriptions of this home, by the way--a house whose identification will be easy enough for those who know the beautiful North-Dorset country--are as good as any part of the book. If you protest that the resulting situation is not only wildly improbable but becoming a stock-in-trade of our novelists, I must admit the first charge, but point out that the authors here secure originality by making the deception an unintended one. _John Tempest_, who in the hardships of his escape has lost memory of his own identity, never ceases to protest that he is at least not the other _John_ for whom the members of the _Seneschal_ family persist in taking him--a twist that makes for piquancy if hardly for added probability. However, the inevitable solution of the problem provides a story entertaining enough, though not, I think, one that will obliterate your memory of others, incomparable, from hands to which we all owe a debt of long enjoyment.