y occupied by the
enemy_). "WELL, THEY SAY THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE 'OME; BUT IT'S A BLOOMIN'
UNCOMFORTABLE PLACE TO MAKE SUCH A FUSS ABOUT LEAVIN'!"

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

_Sinister Street, Vol. II._ (SECKER) is a book for which I have been
waiting impatiently this great while, and I welcomed it with eagerness.
The first volume left off, you may remember, with _Michael_ just about
to go up to Oxford. Knowing what Mr. COMPTON MACKENZIE could do with
such a theme, I have anticipated all these months that to watch his hero
at the university would be to renew my own youth. The book has appeared
now, and I am justified of my faith. I say without hesitation that the
first half of this second volume (which, by the way, to show that it is
a second volume and not a sequel, starts at page 499) is the most
complete and truest picture of modern Oxford that has been or is likely
to be written. For those who, like myself, have their most cherished
memories bound up with the life of which it treats, the actuality of the
whole thing would make criticism impossible. But as a matter of fact
these seventeen chapters seem to me to show Mr. MACKENZIE'S art at its
best. They display just that strange combination of realism and
aloofness that gives to his writing its special charm. No one has ever
(for example) reproduced more perfectly the talk of young men; and this
scattered speech, in what Mr. MACKENZIE himself might call its
infinitely fugacious quality, contrasts effectively with the deliberate,
somewhat mannered beauty of the setting. Mr. MACKENZIE is an overlord of
words, old and new, bending them to strange and unexpected uses, yet
always avoiding affectation by the sheer vitality of his strength. As
for the matter of these first chapters, one might say that nothing
whatever happens in them. They are an epic of adolescence wherein growth
is the only movement. Events are for the second half of the volume. Here
_Michael_ has come down from Oxford, and has set himself to find and
rescue by marriage the girl _Lily_, whom (you remember) he loved as a
boy, and who has since drifted into the underworld. About this part of
the story I will only say that, though the art is still there and the
same haunting melody of style, Mr. MACKENZIE has too strong a sense of
atmosphere to allow him to treat squalor in a fashion that will be
agreeable to the universe. F