ite-handed Hope,
Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings.--_Milton._"

* * * * *

"If men well up in years would cultivate a habit of breathing
properly and always holding themselves erect when walking and
sitting, we would find fewer elderly people bent double when we
do."--_Daily Express._

Our gay contemporary has been caught bending on this occasion.

* * * * *

"He asked the Government not to muzzle the ox that laid golden
eggs."--_The Daily Argosy (Demerara)._

It wasn't really an ox; it was a bull.

* * * * *

From a country retail chemist's appeal to the Local Tribunal for his
son's exemption from Military Service:

"I cannot dispense with him"--or, presumably, without him.

* * * * *

[Illustration: ONCE BIT, TWICE SHY.

_Sporting Lawyer._ "IF YOU'LL TAKE MY ADVICE YOU'LL COME TO THE BRIDGE!"

_Old Farmer._ "NA FEAR! SIX-AND-EIGHTPENCE FOR T' ADVICE? I'D RATHER
CHANCE A DUCKIN'."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

When _Hargrave Ladd_, who was a solicitor in a very fair way of
business, with an agreeable but unemotional wife, happened to be getting
into an omnibus at the moment when _Stella Rayne_ fell off the top of
it, he unconsciously put himself in the way of a lot of bother.
Naturally, as a gentleman and the male protagonist of a novel--_Let Be_
(METHUEN)--he could do no less than pick the girl out of the mud and see
her home in a cab. Whether, quite strictly speaking, he need have called
next day to see how she was getting over the accident is another matter.
Certainly his interfering aunt, _Mrs. Dering_, was of the opinion that
_Hargrave_, as a married man, was displaying an excess of courtesy
towards the pretty tumbler. As for Miss SYBIL CAMPBELL LETHBRIDGE, who
has written the tale, she gives no indication of her views one way or
the other. Indeed this attitude of humorous tolerance for humanity is
Miss LETHBRIDGE'S most striking characteristic. It is at once a source
of strength and weakness to the book, making, on the one hand, for the
reality of the characters, and, on the other, for a certain
non-conductiveness of atmosphere that robs their emotions of warmth.
Anyhow, the inevitable happens, and _Hargrave_ falls in love with
_Stella_, who in turn recip