_Joe_ (_much married_). "Wotchermean--_never?_ They always 'ave!"]

* * * * *

OUR MIGHTY PENMEN.

BY A LITERARY EXPERT.

The House of Boffin announces a revised edition of Mr. Elbert Pitts's
_Final Words on Religion_, under the title of _Antepenultimate
Words on Religion_. As Mr. Pitts observes in his arresting Preface,
"Finality, in a time of upheaval, is a relative term, and I hope,
at intervals of six months or so, to publish my penultimate,
quasi-ultimate and paulo-post-ultimate views on the vital beliefs
which underlie the fantastic superstructure of dogmatic theology."
The new work will be illustrated with three portraits of the author
by Mr. Marcellus Thom, taken at various stages of the composition of
the work.

* * * * *

Mr. Pitts has also completed a new novel entitled _The Bounder of
Genius_, and has kindly furnished us with a brief outline of its
contents. The hero, who starts life as an artificial raspberry-pip
maker and amasses a colossal fortune in the Argentine grain trade,
marries a poor seamstress in his struggling days, but deserts her
for a brilliant variety actress, who is in turn deposed by (1) the
daughter of a dean, (2) the daughter of an earl, and (3) the daughter
of a duke. Ultimately Jasper Dando, for that is his name, leads a