For Colonels flatter you, most firm of warders, For sandbags suppliant, and do no good, And high Staff officers and priests in orders In vain beleaguer you for bits of wood, While I, who have nor signature nor chit, But badly want a bit, I only talk to you of these high themes, Nor stoop to join the sycophantic choir, Seeing (I trust) my wicked batman, Jeames, Has meanwhile pinched enough to light my fire. A.P.H. * * * * * [Illustration: _Lady_ (_looking out of train on to darkened platform_). "PORTER, IS THIS EDGWARE ROAD? I CAN'T SEE A THING." _Porter_ (_with Irish blood in her_). "NOT YET, M'M. EDGWARE ROAD'S THE STATION BEFORE YOU GETS TO BAKER STHEET."] * * * * * OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. (_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS._) "In a few days," says the puff preliminary of _The Coming_ (CHATTO AND WINDUS), "you and all your friends will be reading and discussing this most strange and prophetic novel." Perhaps. But what we shall be saying about it depends largely, I suppose, upon our definition of the term prophetic; also a little upon our feeling with regard to good taste and the permissible in fiction. My own contribution will be a sincere regret that a writer as gifted as Mr. J.C. SNAITH should have attempted the obviously impossible. His theme, symbolised by a wrapper-design of three figures silhouetted against a golden sunrise, is a second advent of the Messiah, embodied in the person of a village carpenter named (with palpable significance) _John Smith_, whom local prejudice sends, not inexcusably, to a madhouse, where he dies, after converting the inmates and instituting a campaign of universal peace. Frankly, the chief interest of such a wildly fantastic idea lies in watching just how far Mr. SNAITH can carry it without too flagrant offence. That his treatment is both sincere and careful hardly lessens my feeling that the whole attempt is one to be deplored. Humour of the intentional kind has, of course, no place in the author's scheme. How remote is its banishment you may judge when I tell you that the Divine message is represented as given to mankind in the form of a wonderful play, which instantly achieves world-wide fame, being performed by no fewer than fifty companies in America alone. The problem (to name but one) of the resulting struggle between plenary inspiration and the conditions of a fit-up tour is only another proof of my contention that there are more things in heaven and earth than can be treated in realistic fiction, and that Mr. SNAITH'S good intentions have unfortunately betrayed him into selecting the least possible. * * * * *