ervations on the' stairs
outside._) Stuck-up, pudden'-'eaded fossils!... battenin' on the
People's brains!... your time'll come some day!... Wait till QUELCH
'ears o' this! &c., &c.

_Lady N._ (_alone_). Thank goodness he's gone!--but _what_ an ordeal!
I really _must_ part with CLARKSON. And--whatever the Primrose
League Council may say--I shall have to tell them I _must_ give up
canvassing. I don't think I _can_ do it any more--after this!

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

"Read it!" said Everyone. "Read what?" asked the Baron. "_The
Wrecker_," answered Everyone. "I will," quoth the Baron, promptly.
And--it was done. It took some time to do, but of this more anon.
The Baron's time is fully occupied, never mind how, but fully, take
his word for it. A copy of _The Wrecker_ was at once provided by its
publishers, Messrs. CASSELL & Co., and the question for the Baron to
consider, was not "What will I do with it?" but How, when, and where,
will I read it? Clearly 'twas no ordinary book. Everybody was saying
so, and what Everybody is saying has considerable weight. A book not
to be trained through at express pace, so that the beauties of the
surrounding scenery would be lost, but something that when once
taken up cannot be put down again, like the brass knobs worked by an
electric-battery,--something giving you fits and starts, and shocks,
as do the electric brass-knobs aforesaid; something that, if you begin
it at 4 P.M., exhausts you by dinner-time, and after dinner, keeps you
awake till you read the last line at 2 A.M., and then tumble into bed
parched, fevered, exhausted, but in ecstasies of delight, feeling as
if you were the hero who had experienced all the dangers, and had come
out of them triumphantly.

[Illustration]

Such were the Baron's anticipations as to the joys in store for him
on reading _The Wrecker_, by Messrs. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON and LLOYD
OSBOURNE. The Baron hit on a plan, he must isolate himself as if he
were a telephone-wire. "Good," quoth he, "Isolation is the sincerest
flattery,--towards authors." The friend in need, not in the sense of
being out at elbows, appeared at the right moment, as did the Slave
of the Lamp to _Aladdin_. "Come to my house in the mountains," said
this Genius, heartily; "come to the wold where the foxes dwell, not
a hundred miles from a cab-stand, yet far far away,--amid lovely
scenery, in beautiful air, to quiet reposeful rooms, with th