D HAT NEXT TIME,
THOUGH. A FELLOW CAME UP TO ME AT THE MEET AND SAID, 'CAP,
HALF-A-CROWN, PLEASE.'"]

* * * * *

=OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.=

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

A new novel by ANTHONY HOPE certainly deserves in these days to
be considered a literary event of some importance. His _Lucinda_
(HUTCHINSON) seems to me both in plot and treatment equal to the best
of his work; as dignified and yet as lightly handled as anything
he has given us in the past. The plot (which I must not betray) is
excellent. From the moment when _Julius_, the narrator, making his
leisurely way to the wedding of _Lucinda_, is passed by her alone in a
taxicab going in an opposite direction, the interest of the intrigue
never slackens. Into an epoch of rather "over-ripe" and messy fiction
this essentially clean and well-ordered tale comes with an effect very
refreshing and tonic. ANTHONY HOPE'S characters as ever are vigorously
alive; in _Lucinda_ herself he has drawn a heroine as charming as any
in that long gallery that now stretches between her and the immortal
_Dolly_. In short, those novel-readers who are (shall I say?)
beginning to demand the respect due to middle age will enjoy in these
pages the threefold reward of present interest, retrospection and a
comforting sense that the literary judgment of their generation is
here triumphantly vindicated in the eyes of unbelieving youth. What
could be more pleasant?

* * * * *

It is a delight to welcome the _Life of Mrs. R. L. Stevenson_
(CHATTO AND WINDUS), not only for the exceptional attraction of the
environment in which she lived for many years, but because under any
circumstances she would have been a remarkable woman. Once, when asked
to write her own life, she refused because it seemed to her like "a
dazed rush on a railroad express;" she despaired of recovering "the
incidental memories." So it fell to her sister, Mrs. VAN DE GRIFT
SANCHEZ, to undertake the task. A difficult one, for there was always
the fear that the personality of Mrs. STEVENSON might seem to be
overshadowed by that of her husband. But the author, in giving us many
interesting details about ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, has been careful
to select for the most part only those in which his wife was closely
concerned. "In my sister's character," she writes, "there were many
strange contradictions, and I think sometimes this was a part of her