nudged his neighbour;
Calm and collected round the chimney-piece
They showed no sign of imminent decease.

In vain he practised all his horrid lore
And rolled his eyes and beckoned with distort hand;
In vain his dagger dripped with gouts of gore,
They only beamed and took a note in shorthand;
When in despair he loosed his flaming jet
One smiled and lit therefrom a cigarette.

That was the end! With agonising shriek
He turned and fled, the spectral perspiration
Dewing his brow and coursing down his cheek;
Fled, and was lost to man's investigation
(For full discussion of his little tricks
See Psychical Research Reports, vol. vi.).

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Country Host._ "I HOPE THE OWLS DIDN'T DISTURB YOU LAST
NIGHT, LADY JENKINS?"

_Wife of Local Mayor._ "LAW BLESS YOU, NO! I DIDN'T 'EAR ANYTHING. WHICH
DOG WAS IT?"]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerics._)

Has Mr. W. J. LOCKE'S hand--the hand that created vagabond _Paragot_ for
tears and laughter, and the resourceful _Aristide_--has it lost its
particular cunning that he should begin his romance of _The Fortunate
Youth_ (LANE) in a mood of heavy and misplaced facetiousness, and drift
by way of Family Heraldry into an atmosphere of sham politics and a
bright general glow of ineffectual snobbery? _Paul Savelli_, the
fortunate youth, with his incredible beauty, his dreams, his
accomplishments beyond all discernible cause, his faintly Disraelian
airs, never once carried me out of my chair. And to what other end is
romance ordained? Nor did his Princess, with her mastery of the easier
French idioms; nor _Barney Bill_, the kind-hearted stage-tramp. Indeed,
I found Mr. LOCKE constantly making statements about his people that
were not substantiated, as about _Ursula Winwood_, the egregiously
competent, the _confidante_ of troubled ministers, bishops and generals.
_Jane_ alone, an early simple friend of _Paul_, I found credible and
charming, and thanked heaven for her sake that _Paul_ married his
Princess. It is indeed a romance gone wrong. Perhaps it is a more
difficult thing plausibly and readily to sustain one's fancy in a modern
setting, with modern folk, than in the fair realm of Tushery with
rapier-wielding demigods. Yet I think that the dead HARLAND and the
living HOPE (himself no mean Tusher