* * * * *

[Illustration: A STARTLING PROPOSITION.

_Seedy Individual_ (_suddenly and with startling vigour_)--"AOH? FLOY
WITH ME ERCROSS THER SEA, ERCROSS THER DORK LERGOON!!"]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

With a spice of _Tristram Shandy_, a dash of _Ferdinand Count Fathom_,
and none the worse for the quaint flavouring thus given to the style
and manner of the romance, _The Blue Pavilions_ by "Q." is about as
good a tale of rapid dramatic and exciting adventure as the Baron
remembers to have read,--for some time at least. There is in it little
enough of love, though that little is well and prettily told, but
there is no lack of fighting at long odds and at short intervals,
of hairbreadth escapes, and of such chances by land and sea as keep
the reader, all agog, hurrying on from point to point, anxious to
see what is to happen next, and how the expected is to eventuate
unexpectedly. The story is for the most part told in a humorous
devil-may-care-believe-it-or-not-as-you-like sort of way which compels
attention, occasionally raises a smile, and always excites curiosity.
As a one-barrel novel, this ought to score a gold right in the centre.

The writer of a little leader in the _Daily News_ of last Wednesday
seems to have been rather hard-up for a subject when he fell foul of
the Messrs. MACMILLAN's cheap re-issue of _A Jest-Book_, compiled many
years ago by _Mr. Punch's_ MARK LEMON, "Uncle MARK," who brought the