OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
A VOCATION.
The Vicar. "Oh—That's your Boy, Smithers? And what's he going to be? A Shoemaker, like yourself?"
Smithers. "Oh no, Sir. He's uncommon fond of Animals, you see—so we're thinking of making him a Butcher!"
"Eton of Old, or, Eighty Years Since!" exclaimed the Baron, and, taking up the handsome volume recently published by Messrs. Griffith and Farran, he was soon absorbed in its pages.
"Rather disappointing," murmured the Baron, as he closed the book, and "read no more that day." "Why, with a good memory, a lively imagination, and a pleasant style, this 'Old Colleger' might have given us something far more amusing than he has done. Of course Anybody's Anecdotes of our Grand Old School will probably be interesting up to a certain point: and they might be made 'funny, without being vulgar.' But this worthy Octogenarian, be he who he may, has produced only a very matter-of-fact book, containing historic information likely to arrest the attention of an old or young Etonian, but only now and again does the author give us anything sufficiently amusing to evoke a laugh. However, in the course of perusal, I have smiled gently, but distinctly. Had the Octogenarian already told many of these stories to his intimates, to whom their narration caused as much facile entertainment as was given to the friends of Mr. Peter Magnus, when he signed himself 'Afternoon,' in substitution for his initials, 'P.M.'?" And it is related how Mr. Pickwick rather envied the ease with which Mr. Magnus's friends were entertained. If so, then is the Baron to the Octogenarian Etonian and his intimates as was Mr. Pickwick to "P. M." and his correspondents. There are some good tales about Keat and Hawtrey, and of course the book, as one among an Etonian series, has its own value for all who care about Eton of the past.