The place is sheer Lilliputia:  for everything is on a reduced scale.  Scores of little beds round the walls, with little pillows and little coverlets; scores of little chairs; a long table so low that it seems to be the footstool of a giant’s wife, with little benches beside it for their little meals.  In the centre of the room are two little pounds, with railings so close together as not to be crawled through, where the more adventurous ones can be kept out of mischief in the company of woolly toys; and outside is a loggia place with little cradles for the babies who want more air to sleep in.

Such is the Stoneleigh Street Creche, and in order to realise what admirable and desirable functions it fulfils—­principally by voluntary aid, for the capitation fee of half-a-crown a week is, of course, quite insufficient to maintain it—­one has only to imagine what the lot of these helpless little creatures would be if they were left in their motherless homes.  Not only would they be far less happy but far less healthy; and it is upon healthy babies that England’s future must be founded.  If any reader of Punch, then, should be in doubt as to what to do with a little surplus money, let the little requirements of these little people be remembered.  The address to which donations should be sent is:  The Secretary, Notting Hill Day Nursery, Stoneleigh Street, Notting Hill, W.

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INTERESTING EXAMPLE OF LONGEVITY?

    “Richard ——­, D.D., a member of the elder branch of the family,
    was a contemporary and friend of Ben Jonson, and his portrait in
    oils, by Romney, is now an heirloom.”—­Provincial Paper.

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    “The stationmaster was then kidnipped—­he is a married
    man.”—­Standard (Buenos Aires).

Possibly henpecked as well.

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[Illustration:  “A SEASON FOR FRESH AIR AND ROOM TO BREATHE.”—­Quotation from one of the above Railway’s advertisements.]

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(BY MR. PUNCH’S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS.)

Those who like to read familiar letters—­and I confess it is one of my favourite literary distractions—­will find matter very much to their mind in Some Hawarden Letters (NISBET), compiled by L. MARCH-PHILLIPS and BERTRAM CHRISTIAN.  It is a collection of letters addressed to Miss MARY GLADSTONE before and after her marriage to Mr. DREW.  Sitting at the centre she seems to have held together her circle by golden threads of confidence and intimacy.  Here you will learn how RUSKIN was brought to visit Hawarden, and how he entirely altered his views on Mr. GLADSTONE, going so far as to suppress a number of Fors Clavigera in which slighting allusion had been made to him.  Here, too, you will find Lord ACTON, who deeply disapproved