With a start Gaveston drew himself up in his chair. How tranquil it all was around Malmaison Lodge! Only from the Virginy creeper beneath his window-sill a ragged-robin chirped her tremulous aubade to a distant willow-warbler invisible among the reeds. The guests had stolen quietly away to their respective bedrooms, and the short midsummer night had hurried past as silent and fleet-footed as his own reverie. He rose to face a new day, a new life.… The future held surprises still, no doubt, even in the unchanging City of the spires. But for him it was enough if the delicate rhythms of the past were beautifully perpetuate. “What more can Life hold than this?” he asked himself, and looked eastward from the casement window over the hollyhocks. With beating veins and mute eyes he gazed out upon a summer sky flushed rosy with the dawn, and around him the quivering air grew suddenly campanulous.… _Widdleswick: Harvest Festival, 1921._ _Cardiff: Empire Day, 1922._ * * * * * MY DISCOVERY OF ENGLAND A NEW HUMOROUS BOOK By STEPHEN LEACOCK Second Edition. 5s. net. “To be a humorist is a desperate enterprise. Let it be said at once that Mr. Leacock’s achievement is assured and triumphant.”--_Morning Post._ “Mr. Stephen Leacock is a lucky man. Like Mark Twain and O. Henry, he can make Englishmen laugh just as hard as Americans.”--_Times._ “This very sagacious and amusing volume. These gay and alert pages are full of wisdom and acuteness, shot through with the author’s high spirits and fun.”--_Punch._ “It is to be hoped that we shall prove Mr. Leacock in the right by buying his latest book, and when our friends have stolen it buying another copy.”--_Evening News._ “I formally declare that ‘My Discovery of England’ is one of the most delightful amusing books I have read for many a day, Mr. Leacock is more than a fellow of infinite jest. He is a man of ideas. He has something to say about pretty nearly everything.”--_Sunday Chronicle._ “What a splendid and healthy thing is a real laughing philosopher. Mr. Leacock is as ‘bracing’ as the sea-side place of John Hassall’s famous poster. His wisdom is always humorous, as his humour is always wise. It is all delightful reading.”--_Sunday Times._ “Another book in which Professor Stephen Leacock gives free rein to his humour, which is quite at its best.”--_Westminster Gazette._ “There is a laugh on every page.”--_Daily Sketch._ JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LTD, VIGO ST., W.1. * * * * * A SCARCE COMMODITY. “Humour is a scarce commodity in Noveldom”--_Glasgow Herald._ A CUCKOO IN THE NEST By BEN TRAVERS