[Illustration: "LOOK HERE, MISS! YOU'VE TAKEN A BIT OUT OF MY EAR!"

"SORRY, SIR; BUT, YOU SEE, I'VE BEEN ON THE DISTRICT RAILWAY FOR THE LAST
THREE MONTHS PUNCHING TICKETS."]

* * * * *

War-Work.

"LADY.--Will any lady exercise a terrier (good-tempered), daily, for a
small remuneration?"--_Bournmouth Daily Echo_.

* * * * *

Kilties Dumbfounded.

Extract from Brigade Orders (Highland Brigade):--

"Socks must be changed and feet greased at least every 24 hours. Socks
can be dried by being placed in trouser pockets."

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

_Zella Sees Herself_ (HEINEMANN) is an unusual and very subtle analysis of
a single character. The author, E.M. DELAFIELD, has made an almost
uncannily penetrating study of the development of a _poseuse_. _Zella_
posed instinctively, from the days when as a child she alienated her father
by attitudinising (with the best intentions) about her mother's funeral. It
became a habit with her. In Rome, before the Arch of Titus, she thought
more of what she might acceptably say about it than of any wonder or beauty
in the thing itself. She fooled the honest man who imagined he was in love
with her by making herself, for the time, just what her fatal facility for
such perception told her he would most like her to be. The skill of the
book is proved by the increasing anxiety, and even agitation, with which
one awaits the moment that shall fulfil the title. It comes, bringing with
it that almost intolerable tragedy of the soul, the black loneliness that
waits upon insincerity. Then poor deluded _Zella_, seeing herself, sees
also the fate that eventually befalls those who have deliberately falsified
the signals by which alone one human heart can speak to and assist another.
That is all the plot of the story, told with remarkable insight and a care
that is both sympathetic and wholly unsparing. I am mistaken if you will
not find it one of the most absorbing within recent experience. But I am
not saying that it may not leave you just a little uncomfortable.

* * * * *

BOYD CABLE is already one of the prose Laureates of the War, having earned
his wreath by _Between the Lines_ and _Action Front_. He now proves that he
is still entitled to it by _Grapes of Wrath_ (SMITH, ELDER). The two former
books