"We must repeat the Scots proverb that--'Delays are dangerous.'"-- _Sunday Paper._ Or, as DRYDEN says in his Address to a Haggis, "De'il tak' the hindmost." * * * * * "The proportion of sane to insane persons in civilized countries is about one to 300."--_Canadian Paper_. Surely Carlyle said something very like this years ago. * * * * * COMMERCIAL CANDOUR. "RAINCOATS AT LESS THAN COST PRICE LAST 3 DAYS."--_Advert. in Provincial Paper_. * * * * * "Lady has Left-off Clothing; privately."--_Provincial Paper._ Of course. That goes without saying. * * * * * [Illustration: _Trainer_ (_to Irish apprentice who has finished among the "also ran"_). "WHY DIDN'T YOU HANG ON TO THE FAVOURITE? DIDN'T I TELL YOU YOU WERE THE ONLY ONE HE WAS AFRAID OF." _Apprentice._ "THAT'S JUST IT, SORR. 'TWAS THE WAY HE WAS SO AFRAID OF ME, WHIN WE CAME INTO THE STRAIGHT, HE JUST FLED AWAY FROM ME."] * * * * * OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. (_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._) Those who appreciate the short story of quality will be pleasantly stirred by the announcement of _Island Tales_ (MILLS AND BOON), a posthumous volume containing what is probably the last writing of the late JACK LONDON. I can say at once that these seven stories show his art in one aspect of its best. Not here the LONDON, whom some of us might prefer, of the strenuous adventure-tale, with whom there was no respite till, at the end of anything up to a hundred sinew-cracking pages, we won through to the appointed end. That South Sea atmosphere, so insidiously appealing to the literary temperament (from STEVENSON to STACPOOLE you can see it at work) has steeped these tales in the lotus-leisure of perpetual afternoon, so that the action of them tends to become overlaid by slow reflective talk, old memories and the sense of ancient things. Most notable is this in the first, where the actual romance, quick, human and haunting, does not so much as show its face till after forty pages of old-time local colour. Perhaps of all the seven I myself would prefer the last--"The Kanaka Surf," a slight intrigue, but a perfect epic of such bathing as, I suppose, can be understood nowhere but on these enchanted coasts. To read it is to realise what a loss we suffer in one who could put such jewelled loveliness on to the printed page--and what another loss in not seeing the original for ourselves. I suppose no tribute to the power of genius could be more eloquent. * * * * *