OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
Good supply of all sorts of game at Christmas, and especially from the preserves of Messrs. De la Rue. Try "Animal Snap" and see how you like it. Thanks to Dean and Son—i.e., Senior Dean and Junior Dean—for their Golden Hours, The Prize, Peeps into Paradise, and The Venetian Blind Moveable Picture Book, the last being the best of all. And Dean's Cracker Toy-books will certainly go off well. As we Sweep through the Deep. "Quite the light publishers for tales of the sea are 'Nelson and Sons,'" quoth the Baron, "and no doubt they hope that every man will do his duty at Christmas time and go in for Nelsonian boys and girls books." "As we Sweep" is by that true Horse Marine (if there is anything in a name), yclept Dr. Gordon Stables, R.N.
The Baroness recommends The Rosebud Annual. A lovely posy of pictures and tales to be found on the shelf of James Clarke & Co., Publishers, and, the Baroness supposes, Nursery Gardeners. "Natural this," quoth a Baronite, "here is a Miss Parson's Adventures told by a Clark Russell!" If you want it send to Chapman and Hall. And all the Baronites say many thanks to Macmillan & Co. for a delightful new edition of Miss Mary Mitford Russell's Our Village.
Our compliments to Mrs. Lovett Cameron on A Tragic Blunder. A blow given by mistake to the wrong person nearly ruins the entire happiness of several people, but it all comes right at the end of two vols. from Mrs. Cameron's pen. It is a nice light entertainment with which to while away an hour or two.
"I like Richard Escott," says the Baron, laying down the Macmillanitish one-volume novel of that name written by E. H. Cooper. "It is an interesting story, and might be the first of a series similar to the Rougon Macquart family, as, when this tale finishes, there are sufficient Escotts alive to carry on the story of their family through many generations, only, unfortunately, the date of this story cannot be taken further back than, say, about ten years ago, if that. To give the family breathing-time, we should require some stories about the Escotts under Queen Anne and the Georges, and then we could return to the fortunes of the sons and daughters the Richard Escott.
"With fear and trembling, yet with a sensation of enjoying some secret wicked pleasure," quoth the Baron, confidentially, "I retired with Mr. Ashby Sterry's Naughty Girl into my sanctum, which, as its name implies, is just the very place to which I ought to retire with a young lady bearing such a character." A Naughty Girl is published in the "Modern Library Series" brought out by Messrs. Bliss, Sands, and Foster; and how happy would Sands be—run out, of course—and where would Foster be unless foster'd by the other two—without Bliss, who makes quite a little 'eaven below of this Publishing Firm. Blissful must have been Mr. Ashby Sterry's state when he wrote so excellent a Dickensian description, as he has done in the earlier part of this book, of Boxing Night at Drury Lane, and when he gave a finishing touch to this story in showing how Beryl and Jack were brought together in spite of a temporary misunderstanding and estrangement. "Bravo Pantalaureate of many a frilling poem! A Happy Christmas to you and your readers!" quoth the warm-hearted and appreciative
Baron de Book-Worms.
An "Up to Date" Young Man.