em to
have difficulties ahead.

* * * * *

"Good fish, fruit, and rabbit business for sale. No opposition
fish or rabbits."--_Bolton Journal._

It looks rather as if the fruit might disagree with you.

* * * * *

Under the heading, "Musical Instruments, etc.":--

"AMERICAN mammoth bronze turkey cockerels, strong, healthy,
grand stock birds; 20s. each."--_Glasgow Herald._

You should hear these musical instruments throw off "Yankee-doodle."

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Servant._ "I CAN'T GET THIS 'ERE TAIL LIGHT TO BURN,
SIR."

_Country Doctor._ "OH, NEVER MIND. WE'RE ONLY GOING HOME, AND I'VE GOT
THE CONSTABLE SAFE IN BED WITH LUMBAGO."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

Mr. Maurice Hewlett's latest volume, _Frey and His Wife_ (WARD, LOCK),
suffers from the defect of being in reality a long short story puffed
out to the dimensions of a short novel; and in consequence, even with
large type--most grateful to the reviewing eye; Heaven forbid I should
complain of that!--and a blank page between each chapter, it has
considerable difficulty in filling its volume. It is a tale of antique
Iceland and Norway. The first part, which is really padding and has
nothing whatever to do with _Frey_ or his matrimonial affairs, treats of
one _Ogmund_, who was called _Ogmund Dint_, for the very good reason
that he had been literally dinted as to the skull. It was done by a
gentleman named _Halward_. Everybody naturally expected _Ogmund_ to dint
back; but he was something of a conscientious objector in the matter of
face-to-face dinting, and being too proud for vulgar conflict he bided
his time till he could cut _Halward_'s throat with the minimum of
personal inconvenience. End of padding and appearance of _Frey_. There
is a picture of _Frey_ on the cover by Mr. MAURICE GREIFFENHAGEN. You
know already what the GREIFFENHAGEN vikings are like--high-coloured,
well developed and (if I dare say it) sometimes a trifle wooden. _Frey_
indeed looked so very wooden that in my foolish ignorance I was tempted
to protest. But the astonishing fact is that Frey was not only wooden in
appearance, but in actuality. How then could he have for wife a slip of
a sixteen-year-old maid that you may have met before in Mr HEWLETT's
romances? This however is the real s