GALLANTRY REWARDED.
Lady (having had a fall at a Brook, and come out the wrong side,—to Stranger, who has caught her Horse). "Oh, I'm so much obliged to you! Now, do you mind just bringing him over?"
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
Books from the publishing house of Fisher Unwin are always goodly to look upon, the public having to thank him for something new in form, binding, and colour, in other series than the Pseudonym Library. In a new edition of The Sinner's Comedy, just issued at the modest price of Eighteenpence, he has solved a problem that has long baffled the publisher, and bothered the public. Few like the appearance of a book with the pages machine-cut; fewer still can spare the time to cut a book. Mr. Fisher Unwin compromises by presenting this dainty little volume with the top pages ready cut, the reader having nothing to do but to slice the side-pages, a labour which no book-lover would grudge, seeing that it leaves the volume with the uncut appearance dear to his heart. The story, told in 146 pages, is, my Baronite says, worthy the distinction of its appearance. The characters are clearly drawn, the plot is interesting, the conversation crisp, and the style throughout pleasantly cynical. The author, John Oliver Hobbes, has a pretty turn of aphorism. "A man's way of loving is so different from a woman's"; and again, "Genius is so rare, and ambition is so common." Here be truths, old enough perhaps, but cleverly re-set.
Some people complain that politics are dull. They should read the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary utterances of the Member for Wrottenborough. They appear weekly in that rising young paper, the Sunday Times, and an extremely readable selection of them has lately been published "in book form," for the enlivening of the Recess. Adapting the Laureate's lines, the Baron would say,—
"They who would vote for an M.P. whose sense with humour chimes,
Will read the Member for Wrottenborough, all in the Sunday Times—
A paper our sires paid Sevenpence for, along of its grit and go,
Seventy years ago, my Public, seventy years ago!"