Distressing Sequel to Early Marriage.

"An exciting scene on Waterloo Bridge was described at Bow-street yesterday when Lydia Wilderspin, aged 2, married, was charged with attempting suicide."—Illustrated Sunday Herald.

"RANK AND FILE.

The following casualties are reported under various dates:—

(The home team is Liverpool except where otherwise shown)."—Liverpool Daily Post.

But surely this is an "away" match?

Extract from interview with French journalist:—

"Mr. Lloyd George's face lit up proudly as he modestly replied."

Will the PRIME MINISTER please tell us how is is done? It might solve the problem of getting about in the darkened streets.

"JAMES KENNEDY,
Monumental Sculptor,

Having been called up for Military Service, Mr. Kennedy is forced to close down his Business, all the other male members of the family being already on Service. He begs to take this opportunity of thanking all patrons who have accorded him their support in the past, and he hopes that any who might have business requiring his attention may be able to hold over same until his return to business."—Ayrshire Post.

We shall do our best to oblige. "Live and let live" is our motto.

CHILDREN'S TALES FOR GROWN-UPS.

II.

BELLING THE CAT.

"The only question is," said the old mouse, "who is to bell the cat?"

"An absurd question," said the strategist.

"It has finished the story for hundreds of years," said the old mouse crossly.

The strategist turned his back on the old mouse. "What is needed," he said, "is a plan. We must make the cat appear ridiculous, and the people of the house will see it is no use as a mouser. Then they will turn it into a pet cat and bell it themselves."

"Shall we send a deputation?" growled the old mouse.

"We must go out and hunt for food in the daytime," said the strategist.

"We shall all be killed," cried the mice, shivering with terror.

"No more than are killed now," said the strategist. "Less, in fact, because cats do not see so well in the daytime."

And it turned out as the strategist predicted. Mice ran about boldly everywhere, and though the cat caught some of them the people of the house were dissatisfied. "We might as well drown that cat at once and get a real mouser," said the master.

"Oh, don't drown poor pussy," said the little girl. "Do let me keep her."

"Well, mind you put a bell round her neck, then," laughed the master of the house, "so that she may know that she's not a real mouser."

That night there was joy unheard of among the mice. They scampered about happily, and ran away chuckling when pussy came tinkling along. The strategist was crowned king.

Next day the real mouser arrived. His first victim was the strategist.

Illumination.

"In my youth I had learnt, by sedulously imitating the pantaloons in the harlequinades, to drop flat on my face instinctively, and to produce the illusion of being picked up neatly by the slack of my trousers and set on my feet again."—Mr. Bernard Shaw in "The Daily Chronicle."

This revelation of youthful self-culture helps one to understand so much that Mr. SHAW does to-day.

A SONG OF FOOD-SAVING.

[Being a faithful effort to versify the article written by Dr. E.I. SPRIGGS, at the request of the FOOD CONTROLLER, on the food requirements of people of different ages and build.]

"The L.C.C. had decided to grant only £5,300 amongst £21,000 teachers, which would average a shilling a head per week. (Shame!)"—Daily Paper.

We agree. Why any War bonus at all to such bulging plutocrats?

"As I watched youths obediently obeying the whistle I wondered what football would be like after the war."—Daily Paper.

At present it seems rather redundantly redundant.

AT THE PLAY.

"THE MAN WHO WENT ABROAD."

The authors of The Man Who Stayed at Home (I preserve their modest anonymity) have contrived a sequel to that exciting and veracious stage account of secret service activities. The Man Who Went Abroad on one of those famous State-paper chases, in which conspirators conspire in the least likely places, such as the promenade decks of liners, is the man who spent his time in chimneys at home in the earlier part of the War—Kit Brent.

He had a cousin, Lord Goring, Cabinet Minister, bound on a mission to Washington; and Kit, who was as like his cousin as clean-shaven KENNETH DOUGLAS was like KENNETH DOUGLAS with a toothbrush moustache, took his cabin while the important peer preceded him in another boat. On board Kit disports himself as a fatuous ass, of the kind that hyphenated Americans (in plays) would naturally assume to be the staple of a British Cabinet. Not that Goring really was such an ass; but it was Kit's plan to be so guileless as to induce the enemy agents to think they had a sitter. And I must say they were pretty easily induced. Their general schema was to get those inevitable papers, copy and return them, and delay Goring's visit to Washington, while the late lamented BERNSTORFF put in a suggestion which would make the British schemes, whatever they were—it was secret service, so we, rightly, never knew—look foolish. And they had the Hunnish idea of compromising the silly peer with an irresistible Austrian danseuse (Ani Kiraly), so that fear of exposure (by Hidden-Hand Press) of intrigue with enemy aliens would make him hand over the "papers." Brent played up to all this. But the lady of the ballet fell really in love with him, and besides was actually a Dalmatian and on the right side, a fact which she proclaimed at the top of her voice on the promenade dock, though, as she added, it meant death if discovered. In New York the Kiraly appears in Kit's bed-bathroom in the early morning, for devilment; to our loud enjoyment, for the great bath joke has an assured immortality. The Kiraly's husband appears too. Fat in fire. When Kit goes to the hyphenated's flat to exchange fake papers in his belt for letter acknowledging Kiraly's innocence, an agitated Hun appears with the news that the real Goring is in Washington, and the papers all spoof; which was annoying, as a reading-glass had already disclosed to the chief spy the British Government watermark, which obviously proved they were genuine.

Nothing for it but to clear out (through a portrait of the All-Highest), leaving Kit in the safe to suffocate. Enter police (comic). Where is Kit? Brain-wave. In the safe, behind secret panel. Problem: how to open it. The service was evidently so secret that it had never told one of its brightest young men about combination letter-locks. But the dancer remembers that the chief spy had carefully explained to her the letters of the combination. Release of Kit and a curtain which suggested that the initiative remained with the Kiraly.

The authors are to be congratulated. They provided a good unpretentious evening's entertainment. No dull and pedantic realism for them. The dialogue was bright, occasionally to the sparkling point. The players were competent and zealous. Mr. KENNETH DOUGLAS gave the right variety to his three parts, Goring as he was, Goring as he was assumed to be for purpose of bluffing the enemy, and Kit Brent; and he played his great bathroom scene with humour and complete discretion. Miss IRIS HOEY was a charming innocent adventuress with heart of gold and eye of gladness; Mr. HIGNETT, as Kit's self-possessed man Cosens, quite admirable, with just the right mixture of friendliness without impertinence and restraint without servility. Mr. WENMAN as a superabundant gum-chewing impresario, and Mr. EILLE NORWOOD as head villain, were quite plausible in the interesting and unlikely situation. I must say I like this kind of nonsense immensely.     T.

A Cautious Prophecy.

"... One of the reasons of the satisfaction is that the huge yield of the Loan effectively postpones any further borrowings on a similar scale until the end of the War. By that time victory should either have been attained or be in sight."—Irish Paper.

"A well educated young lady, the daugter of a French interned prisoner of war, desires to make the acquaintance with an English or American family to mutually improve the languages."—Daily Paper, Lausanne.

The result will be awaited with interest in editorial circles.

SEED POTATOES FOR PATRIOTS.

(Garnered from the catalogue of the George Washington Seed Company.)

"Adonis."—Strikingly handsome oval tuber of the fashionable nigger-brown shade. Never had a day's illness. Every "Adonis" potato is inoculated for wireworm before leaving our grounds.

"Automatic."—Remarkable novelty; digs itself in, and jumps out of the ground when ready. Self-peeling; skin comes off in the saucepan. Immense boon to busy housewives.

"Little Gem."—For window-boxes. Flowers closely resemble Odontoglossum. Much in demand for Mayfair mansions. Dainty electro-plated trowel given away with every order for a hundred-weight.

The "Beanato."—Sensational discovery; the result of a cross between an Early Rose potato and a scarlet-runner. Will take the place of ramblers on pergolas. Blooms brilliantly all the summer; festoons of khaki fruit with green facings in the autumn. Retains the lusciousness of the bean with the full floury flavour of the tuber.

"Argus."—The potato with a hundred eyes. Never sprouts in less than ninety-eight places. Should be put through the mincing-machine before planting.

War-Work.

"LADY.—Will any lady exercise a terrier (good-tempered), daily, for a small remuneration?"—Bournmouth Daily Echo.

Kilties Dumbfounded.

Extract from Brigade Orders (Highland Brigade):—

"Socks must be changed and feet greased at least every 24 hours. Socks can be dried by being placed in trouser pockets."

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)

Zella Sees Herself (HEINEMANN) is an unusual and very subtle analysis of a single character. The author, E.M. DELAFIELD, has made an almost uncannily penetrating study of the development of a poseuse. Zella posed instinctively, from the days when as a child she alienated her father by attitudinising (with the best intentions) about her mother's funeral. It became a habit with her. In Rome, before the Arch of Titus, she thought more of what she might acceptably say about it than of any wonder or beauty in the thing itself. She fooled the honest man who imagined he was in love with her by making herself, for the time, just what her fatal facility for such perception told her he would most like her to be. The skill of the book is proved by the increasing anxiety, and even agitation, with which one awaits the moment that shall fulfil the title. It comes, bringing with it that almost intolerable tragedy of the soul, the black loneliness that waits upon insincerity. Then poor deluded Zella, seeing herself, sees also the fate that eventually befalls those who have deliberately falsified the signals by which alone one human heart can speak to and assist another. That is all the plot of the story, told with remarkable insight and a care that is both sympathetic and wholly unsparing. I am mistaken if you will not find it one of the most absorbing within recent experience. But I am not saying that it may not leave you just a little uncomfortable.

BOYD CABLE is already one of the prose Laureates of the War, having earned his wreath by Between the Lines and Action Front. He now proves that he is still entitled to it by Grapes of Wrath (SMITH, ELDER). The two former books gave us detached articles all relating to the one great subject. The present book is a continuous story, the episodes of which are held together by the deeds and characters of a quartette of friends, Larry Arundel, Billy Simson, Pug Sneath, and the noble and adventurous American, Kentucky Lee, who had enlisted in our Army to prove that "too proud to fight" was a phrase which did not agree with the traditions of an old Kentucky family. These four and the rest of the regiment, the Stonewalls, are plunged into one of the big "pushes" of the British Army, and their achievements in one form or another are thick on every page of the book. The author has reduced the description of a modern battle to a fine art. No one can describe more vividly the noise, the squalor, the terror, the high courage, the self-sacrifice and again the nerve-shattering noise, that go to make up the fierce confusion of trench-fighting. How anyone succeeds in surviving when so many instruments are used for his destruction is a mystery. The book is very certainly one to be read and re-read.

Separation (CASSELL) is another of those intimate studies of Anglo-Indian life that ALICE PERRIN has made specially her own. The tragedy of it is sufficiently conveyed by the title. Separation, of husband from wife or parent from child, is of course the spectre that haunts the Anglo-Indian home. It was, chiefly at least, for the health of their child Winnie that Guy Bassett was forced to let her and his wife abide permanently in Kensington while he himself continued his Eastern career as a grass-widower. Very naturally, the result was all sorts of trouble. This first took the form of a flirtation, only half serious, with an artful young woman of the type with which Mr. KIPLING has made us familiar. Unfortunately poor Bassett escapes from this emotional frying-pan only to plunge into the fire of a much more scorching attachment. But I will not spoil for you an ingenious plot. For one thing at least the book is worth reading, and that is the picture, admirably drawn, of the half-caste Orchard family, whose ways and speech and general outlook you will find an abiding joy. Mrs. PERRIN has nothing better in her whole gallery, which is saying much.

You probably know Mr. BLACKWOOD'S elusive method of mystery-mongering by now. None of his characters can ever quite make out whether the latest noise is a mewing cat, the wind in the trees or the Great God Pan flirting with the Hamadryads. He meets in Egypt a Russian, consumptive with a hooked nose and a rotten bad temper, and persists in seeing him as a hawk-man dedicated to the wingéd god, Horus. "No one could say exactly what happened." (They never can.) But it was something very solemn and important, and in the end the Russian, in a fancy dress of feathers, was found dead at the foot of the cliff, whither he had flown (or was it danced?—well, no one quite knew). He all but carried with him little golden-haired Vera, who was all but a dove. This is a quite characteristic sample out of Day and Night Stories (CASSELL). And the conclusion I came to was that Mr. BLACKWOOD must get a lot of fun out of staying in "cosmopolitan hotels." You need a special attitude for the proper enjoyment of these mystical yarns. I read them all conscientiously through, and I got far the best thrill out of "The Occupant of the Room," which, attempting less, was much more successful. "H.S.H.," His Satanic Majesty, of course, who was climbing the Devil's Saddle and turned in to the Club hut for desultory conversation about his lost kingdom with a stranded mountaineer, left me inappropriately cold. I suppose I am immune, a bad subject: but I feel as sure as I've felt about anything in the realm of light letters that a charming writer is overworking an unprofitable vein.

Mrs. Vernon's Daughter (METHUEN) is what one might call a story of situation. That is to say, it leads up to, and declines from, one big scène à faire. The scene, in this instance, is that in which Demaris, who has always previously imagined her mother to be an undervalued heroine, finds that on the contrary she is really no better (indeed a good deal worse) than she should be. And as if this disillusion were not enough the poor girl gets almost simultaneously the further shock of learning that the same adored parent, supposed by her to be a tragédienne of the first water, is in fact no more than a handsome stick, and unable (as they say) to act for nuts. Jesting apart, I am bound to admit that Lady TROUBRIDGE has risen admirably to the demands of her theme, and written a story both direct and appealing. Perhaps (dare I say?) its emotion is rather more secure than its grammar. The fact that she makes a duchess allude to "these kind of things" struck me at first as a subtlety of characterization, till I discovered that, some pages later, the author fell herself into the identical pit. But I suppose there is hardly any one of us wholly innocent of this offence; anyhow, it is only a small blemish upon a pleasant and (in its mild way) interesting story.

"A large assortment of real fur soft felt cats (Clerical)."—Advt. in "Glasgow Herald."

The tame kind, we suppose, so popular at tea-parties.