A TRIFLE FOR THE BUILDER.—"When are houses like difficulties?" And the practical man replies, "When they have to be 'faced.'"
THE RULING PASSION STRONG AT DINNER.
Laconic Waiter (thoroughly familiar with Sporting Major's taste in Champagne). "SEVENTY-FOUR, SIR?"
Sporting Major (down on his luck, after a bad week at Newmarket). "SEVEN-TO-FOUR, SIR! DASH IT! WOULDN'T TAKE TEN TO ONE ABOUT ANYTHING!"
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
"Respected ANDREW LANG," writes the Baron's Assistant Reader, "I have read your criticism in Longman's Magazine upon Mr. BARRY PAIN's In a Canadian Canoe. It's an ugly piece of bludgeon work, I admit, but not convincing to anyone who has read the book of which you speak. You tear away a line or two from the context, and ask your readers to say if that is wit or humour. How your admirers would have protested had any sacrilegious critic ventured to treat one of your own immortal works in this manner. Essays in Little, a book which, by the way, appeared in the same series for which Mr. BARRY PAIN wrote, is a pleasant and inoffensive compilation, but even Essays in Little would have presented a sorry appearance if, let us say, ANDREW LANG had reviewed it in this perfunctory and extractory and arbitrary fashion. I remember that in that case the critics were respectfully enthusiastic. Even Mr. BLUDYER would have doffed his cap, I fancy, to one