* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

"Dear Miss DOLLIE RADFORD," writes the Assistant-Reader, "I trust I am
right in the feminine and unconjugal prefix; but, be that as it may, I
wish simply to tell you that, at the instigation of a lettered friend,
I have spent a few moments very wisely in reading your thin little
book of verse, _A Light Load_. (ELKIN MATHEWS.) I feel now as if I had
been gently drifting down a smooth broad river under the moonlight,
when all nature is quiet. I don't quite know why I feel like that,
but I fancy it must be on account of some serene and peaceful quality
in your poems. Here, then, there are sixty-four little pages of
restfulness for those whose minds are troubled. You don't plunge
into the deep of metaphysics and churn it into a foam, but you perch
on your little bough and pipe sweetly of gorse and heather and wide
meadows and brightly-flashing insects; you sing softly as when, in
your own words--

"--gently this evening the ripples break
On the pebbles beneath the trees,
With a music as low as the full leaves make,
When they stir in some soft sea-breeze."

One of my "Co." says he always reads anything that comes in his way
bearing the trade-mark BLACKWOOD. His faith has been justified on
carrying off with him on a quiet holiday, _His Cousin Adair_, by
GORDON ROY. The book has all the requisites of a good novel, including
the perhaps rarest one of literary style. _Cousin Adair_ is well worth
knowing, and her character is skilfully portrayed. As a foil against