MR. PUNCH'S CHILD'S GUIDE TO KNOWLEDGE.
Question. What is a holiday?
Answer. The hard work of that wearisome pursuit known as "pleasure."
Q. To whom are holidays profitable?
A. To the butchers, the pastry-cooks, and last, but certainly not least, the doctors.
Q. What are the ends of holidays?
A. Pills and Bills.
Q. What are pills?
A. The means by which fortunes are made, and in another sense Clubs kept select.
Q. And Bills?
A. Necessary evils laid on the table in the House of Commons, and thrown into the waste-paper basket in the domestic circle.
Q. What is Parliament?
A. An assembly of men in which hats are worn when the Members don't want to talk, and removed when they wish to show what amount of brains they may possess.
Q. What is a hat?
A. Generally a nuisance.
Q. What is cover?
A. The profit made by an Outside Broker out of his too confiding customers.
Q. What is the difference between an Outside Broker and an Inside Broker?
A. One is associated with the Stock Exchange, and the other is usually made comfortable with a pot of beer and a penny paper in the kitchen.
Q. What is a kitchen?
A. The source from which happiness or misery flows under the superintendence of a cook.
Q. Describe a cook.
A. As a food-preparer he, or she, is often an executioner.
Q. What is a century?
A. When obtained by a cricketer, an honour; when achieved by an individual, a distinction that must be shortly followed by extinction.
Our Booking-Office.—John Oliver Hobbes's last contribution to Fisher Unwin's charming Pseudonym Library is well named A Study in Temptations. It is not in itself an attractive title, but it accurately indicates the style of the book. It is a study for a novel rather than an accomplished work. One expects, my Baronite says, that in some leisure time the author will come back and finish it. It is well worth the labour, being full of living characters. Lady Warbeck in particular, is excellent, reminiscent of, and worthy of Thackeray. The temptingly arranged pages glitter with shrewd thoughts admirably phrased. Baron de B.-W.
No Doubt as to the Answer.—In the list of "Noblemen and Gentlemen" (invidious distinction, by the way) attending the Levée at St. James's Palace, whose name would be always found?—Why that of "James O. Forbes, of Corse."