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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS._)

"In a few days," says the puff preliminary of _The Coming_ (CHATTO
AND WINDUS), "you and all your friends will be reading and discussing
this most strange and prophetic novel." Perhaps. But what we shall
be saying about it depends largely, I suppose, upon our definition
of the term prophetic; also a little upon our feeling with regard to
good taste and the permissible in fiction. My own contribution will
be a sincere regret that a writer as gifted as Mr. J.C. SNAITH should
have attempted the obviously impossible. His theme, symbolised by a
wrapper-design of three figures silhouetted against a golden sunrise,
is a second advent of the Messiah, embodied in the person of a village
carpenter named (with palpable significance) _John Smith_, whom local
prejudice sends, not inexcusably, to a madhouse, where he dies, after
converting the inmates and instituting a campaign of universal peace.
Frankly, the chief interest of such a wildly fantastic idea lies in
watching just how far Mr. SNAITH can carry it without too flagrant
offence. That his treatment is both sincere and careful hardly lessens
my feeling that the whole attempt is one to be deplored. Humour of the
intentional kind has, of course, no place in the author's scheme. How
remote is its banishment you may judge when I tell you that the Divine
message is represented as given to mankind in the form of a wonderful
play, which instantly achieves world-wide fame, being performed by no
fewer than fifty companies in America alone. The problem (to name but
one) of the resulting struggle between plenary inspiration and the