Mahomet had to go to the Mountain, but Mr. Montagu is more fortunate.

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[Illustration:  Bill.  “I dessay some women can do men’s work.  But they’ll never git men’s wages.”

Joe (much married).  “Wotchermean—­never? They always ’ave!”]

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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.

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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 crusade to Patagonia, where he establishes a new republic founded on Eugenics, China tea, and the Prohibition of the Classics.  Mr. Pitts thinks it the finest thing he has done, and he is fortified in this conviction by the opinion of Mr. Stoot, the principal reader of the House of Boffin.

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We are glad to hear that Mr. Hanley Potter will shortly issue, through the firm of Bloomer and Guppy, a selection from the reviews, notices and essays contributed by him to The Slagville Gazette.  “They are interesting,” says the author, “as the expression of a fresh and unbiassed mind, unfettered by any respect for established reputations or orthodox standards.”  The titles of some of the articles—­“The Dulness of Dante,” “The Sloppiness of Scott,” “George Eliot as Pedant,” “Jane Austen the Prude”—­indicate sufficiently the richness of the treat provided in these stimulating pages.

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