OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
Read "As Haggards on the Rock" in Scribner's for May. It is a weird tale, but nothing whatever to do with "Haggard" ("Rider" of that ilk), which may or may not be an additional attraction, according to the taste and fancy of the reader. "Never do I see Scribner's Magazine," quoth the Baron, "without wishing to change its name, or start a competitor under the style and title of 'Scribbler's Magazine.' If the latter isn't 'a colourable imitation,' it must be done, and that speedily."
Woman, though appearing weekly, comes out peculiarly strong. "A really entertaining, interesting, and chatty publication," says the Baroness.
One of the best volumes of the Badminton Library series is that on Golf, recently published, written chiefly by Horace G. Hutchinson, with capital contributions on the subject from the great ruler of Home-Rulers, Arthur Balfour, M.P., and the ubiquitous and universally gifted Merry Andrew Lang, to whom no subject, apparently, presents any difficulty whatever, he being, like Father O'Flynn, able to discourse on Theology or Conchology, or Mythology, and all the other ologies, including, in this instance, Golfology, with equal skill and profundity of wisdom. Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit, and the scent of the Lang y Lang, is over all periodical literature generally. Let not the elderly intending student of Golf, on opening the book, be deterred by seeing a chapter headed "Clubs and Balls," which may induce him to say, "My dancing days are over." The illustrations, by Messrs. C. L. Shute, T. Hodge, and H. Fiery Furniss, are excellent. The vignettes in A. Lang's paper—especially one happily taken from an "Old Miss-all," where several players are represented as not making a hit—are both interesting and amusing. On the whole—on the Golfian Hole—a capital volume. Mr. Punch drinks to his Grace of Beaufort in a cup of Badminton.