"'It was between half-past seven and eight,' said a fireman, 'and as I was off duty I came out on deck for a blow. The force of the explosion threw me along the deck for some yards.'"—Daily Paper.
"This is indeed a blow," said the gallant stoker—we don't think.
"HENRY, I WISH YOU WOULD WRITE TO THE URBAN COUNCIL AND TELL THEM TO SEND A DUSTMAN WHO TURNS HIS TOES IN. OUR ROCK BORDER'S BEING COMPLETELY RUINED!"
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
I have the feeling that when Mr. RUDYARD KIPLING called his new volume A Diversity of Creatures (MACMILLAN) he was rather taking the word out of my mouth, or the sword out of my hand, or whatever one does for the confusion and discomforting of critics. Because it is just the extreme diversity of the tales herein which, while providing (as they say) something for all tastes, makes it very hard to appraise the book as a whole. In form it follows the KIPLING convention, endeared to us by so much pleasure, of sandwiching prose and verse, the poems echoing the idea of the tale that has preceded them, and themselves likely to prove for many the most attractive pages of the book. As for the stories, here we get diversity indeed; and not of theme alone. It is, of course, almost impossible for anything signed by Mr. KIPLING to be wholly commonplace, but I am bound to admit that there is at least one of the collection (which, pardon me, I do not mean to name) that makes a notable effort in that direction. Also there are two of which one can honestly say that no other pen could have written them with anything like such finished art—The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat, which one might call a fantasia upon Publicity, and (to my mind the best thing in the volume) My Son's Wife, an exquisitely humorous and cunning study in the Influence of Landed Estate upon a Modern. If this definition strikes you as obscure, read the story and you will understand. For the rest, as I said above, all tastes are catered for; so that the rival schools who admire Mr. KIPLING most as the creator of Plain Tales, or Stalky or Puck, will each receive encouragement and support; while, if there be those who prefer the pot-boiler undisguisable, they too will not find themselves altogether neglected.