But (you will say) why not ask the hatter or some intimate friend to select the hat for you? I guessed you would suggest that. But it won't help; I'll tell you why. Some years ago I knew a fat man with a big head--a journalist of great ability--who made himself undignified by perching upon the top of that great and capable head a little bowler. Its inadequacy had always annoyed me, but never more so than when, on my arriving at our place of servitude one morning (we were on the same paper) in a new and perfectly becoming hat, he said to me, "That hat's all wrong. You should never choose a hat for yourself. I _never_ do. I get my wife to choose mine for me." Remembering this I am even more unsettled than before. I see no hope. * * * * * [Illustration: _Mistress_. "OH, HE'S GONE INTO THE TRENCHES, HAS HE? WELL, YOU MUSTN'T WORRY." _Maid_. "OH, NO, MA'AM, I'VE LEFT OFF WORRYING NOW. HE CAN'T WALK OUT WITH ANYONE ELSE WHILE HE'S THERE."] * * * * * OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. (_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS_.) The idea of publishing _Frederick the Great: The Memoirs of his Reader, Henri de Catt_ (_1758-1760_) (CONSTABLE) was that we are all so passionate against Prussianism that we want to plank down our money for two volumesful of observations at first hand about the man who was the source and origin of that dark and swollen stream. Personally, we doubt the general zeal in this matter--not of Prussianism but of FREDERICK. However, DE CATT, looking at a king from a queer angle, is extraordinarily diverting. "Reader" was a euphemism for a patient audience, including _claque_. FREDERICK, _incognito_ on a Dutch barge, picked up the young scholar and marked him down as one who could be induced by florins and flattery to take on the job of listening to his patron's bad French verses and his after-dinner flutings of little things of his own, his approving observations on his own conduct, his battles, his philosophy of life and politics, no doubt calculating that it would all be jotted down on fateful scraps of paper and given a favourable colouring for the edification of the world. Well, the great FREDERICK put it over me all right. Frankly I rather liked the old fellow, his old clothes (there was at least no shining armour swank at Potsdam in those days), his practice of solemnly cutting capers for the benefit of his "reader," though I know not explicitly what a caper is, his Billingsgate language, his real opinion of VOLTAIRE, his charming, if possibly rare, acts of magnanimity, his moderation in war, which was not all hypocrisy. In fact, if you expect an ogre you will be disappointed. He could give the latest Hohenzollern points in a good many directions. I ought, of course, to add that a learnedly allusive preface by Lord ROSEBERY graces the volume, and that the very competent translation is by F.S. FLINT. * * * * *