"Mme. Karsavina is taller than Pavlova, but has an equally perfect figure. The Greeks would have bracketted her with Venus and Aphrodite."--_Provincial Paper._ The two last have, of course, been constantly bracketed. * * * * * [Illustration: Golfer (very much off his game). "ONE ROUND NEARER THE GRAVE."] * * * * * OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. (_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._) Not for a long time have I got so great a pleasure from any collection of short sketches as now from Miss ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK'S _Autumn Crocuses_ (SECKER). Not only has the whole book a pleasant title, but each of these stories is happily called after some flower that plays a part in its development. I am aware of the primly Victorian sound of such a description applied to art so modern as that of Miss SEDGWICK. You know already (I hope) how wonderfully delicate is her almost passionate sensibility to the finer shades of a situation. It is, I suppose, this quality in her writing that makes me still have reminiscent shivers when I think about that horrible little bogie-tale, _The Third Window_; and these "Flower Pieces" (as 1860 might have called them) are no whit less subtle. I wish I had space to give you the plots of some of them; "Daffodils," for instance, a quite unexpected and thrilling treatment of perhaps the oldest situation of literature; or "Staking a Larkspur," the only instance in which Miss Sedgwick's gently smiling humour crystallizes definitely into comedy; or "Carnations," the most brilliantly written of all. As this liberty is denied me you must accept a plain record of very rare enjoyment and take steps to share it. * * * * *