But though, doubtless, soft nothings may set your heart beating,
Yet they're awfully cold for the people outside.

Want of thought, not of heart, is the reason as ever,
So if you find leisure to read through this rhyme,
When you order your carriage, in future endeavour
To prevent any waiting--by being in time,

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

The Publisher of _The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine_, earnestly
requests the reviewer, appealing to his heart in the reddest of red
ink, on a slip of paper pasted on to the cover of the Magazine, not
to extract and quote more than one column of "Talleyrand's Memoirs,"
which appear in this number for January. The Publisher of the
_C.I.M.M._ does not appeal personally to the Baron--who is now
the last, bar one, of the Barons, and that bar one is one at the
Bar,--but, for all that, the Baron hereby and hereon takes his
solummest Half-a-Davey or his entire Davey, that he will not write,
engrave, or represent, or cause to be, &c, for purposes of quotation,
one single word, much less line, of _Tallyho_--beg pardon, of
_Talleyrand_,--extracts from whose memoirs are now appearing in the
aforesaid _C.I.M.M._ But all he will say at present is this, that,
if the secret and private Memoirs haven't got in them anything more
thrilling or startling, or out of the merest common-place, than
appears in this number of the _C.I.M.M._, then the Baron will say that
he would prefer reading such contributions as M. de BLOWITZ's story of
"How he became a Special," or _The Pigmies of the African Forest_ by