CHANTRY.

Grey dust lies on his battered face;
The glories of his shield are dim;
Half vanished are the words of grace
Beseeching pity and peace for him
Along the Purbeck rim.

His hands are folded palm to palm
(Some fingers lacking on the right),
And at his peaked feet the calm
Old lion shows he fell in fight,
As best became a knight.

The ivy shakes its tattered leaves
Where once he saw the painted pane;
The brooding, scurrying spider weaves
Where cloth of damask dyed in grain
Will never hang again.

With missal propped upon his helm
For him no drowsy chantor pleads;
But blackbirds in the darkening elm
Sing plain-song, and the Abbey meads
Retell their daisy-beads.

D. M. S.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Lady_. "AND WHY DID YOU LEAVE YOUR LAST SITUATION?"

_Prospective Maid_. "WELL, THAT'S A BIT INQUISITIVE, AIN'T IT, MUM? I
DIDN'T ASK YOU WHY YOUR LAST GIRL LEFT YOU."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.)

I am as a rule very strongly against the form of pedantry that hastens
to cry "imitation" whenever a new writer finds himself impelled to
a theme of the same character as that already associated with an
old-established practitioner. But in the case of _The Lost Horizon_
(METHUEN) I find myself overwhelmed. Consciously or unconsciously Mr.
G. COLBY BORLEY has produced a story that in matter and treatment is
so palpably a reflection of JOSEPH CONRAD that the likeness simply
refuses to be ignored. It is in its way a good story enough--an affair
of adventure in South America and on the high seas, with a generous
sufficiency of oaths and blood-letting; a tale moreover that gives
evidence (in spite of that distressing echo) of being written by
one who takes his craft with a becoming dignity of purpose. One
peculiarity of the Master has not only been borrowed by Mr. BORLEY,
but exaggerated to his own undoing: I mean the trick of introducing
a character or group of characters so clogged and obscured by the
adhesions of the uncommunicated past that not till this has been
gradually flaked from them do they emerge as figures in whom it is
possible to take an intelligent interest. In the present instance this
process is delayed for more than half the book. As for the intrigue,
that concerns a group of cut-throat Europeans, who, having