"Radical joins Conservative In a concord wholly hearty, Wanting to know if the State will give An adequate wage upon which to live, And so does the National Party. "And the boots of the Labour Members creak And a terrible ghastly pallor is On the Wee Free face as it tries to speak; But ah! what a change to each sunken cheek If you put a bit more on our salaries! "Shibboleths old to the wind we'd fling And turn to the task that presses; Sound reforms would go with a swing And we might have a chance of lengthening Those fearfully short recesses. "There'd be the chance to show your tact In welding the hostile sections; Sworn and sealed in a mighty pact We'd put on the books the world's best Act Abolishing all elections." EVOE. [Footnote A: This beautiful opening line is not original. It is borrowed, with due acknowledgments, from a once famous music-hall song.] * * * * * From an article on "History without Tears":-- "There is no book that gives one a more comprehensive idea of the character of the Byzantine Empire, of the reasons for its decline and its disappearance, than Scott's 'Count Robert of Sicily.'" Except perhaps Wrongfellow's "King Robert of Paris." * * * * * [Illustration: _Sportsman (who has mounted boy for his first hunt in Ireland_). "WELL, HOW DID YOU GET ON?" _Boy._ "FIRST-RATE, THANK YOU. I'LL GO IN A HARD HAT NEXT TIME, THOUGH. A FELLOW CAME UP TO ME AT THE MEET AND SAID, 'CAP, HALF-A-CROWN, PLEASE.'"] * * * * * =OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.= (_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._) A new novel by ANTHONY HOPE certainly deserves in these days to be considered a literary event of some importance. His _Lucinda_ (HUTCHINSON) seems to me both in plot and treatment equal to the best of his work; as dignified and yet as lightly handled as anything he has given us in the past. The plot (which I must not betray) is excellent. From the moment when _Julius_, the narrator, making his leisurely way to the wedding of _Lucinda_, is passed by her alone in a taxicab going in an opposite direction, the interest of the intrigue never slackens. Into an epoch of rather "over-ripe" and messy fiction this essentially clean and well-ordered tale comes with an effect very refreshing and tonic. ANTHONY HOPE'S characters as ever are vigorously alive; in _Lucinda_ herself he has drawn a heroine as charming as any in that long gallery that now stretches between her and the immortal _Dolly_. In short, those novel-readers who are (shall I say?) beginning to demand the respect due to middle age will enjoy in these pages the threefold reward of present interest, retrospection and a comforting sense that the literary judgment of their generation is here triumphantly vindicated in the eyes of unbelieving youth. What could be more pleasant? * * * * *