Brief interval for lunch, and then a drizzle
    Fell on the dreary field.  Like some dead moth
  The thing remained.  Chagrin commenced to sizzle,
    And certain people cried, “A thillingth loth.” 
  Others, “Hey, Mister Airman, it’s a swizzle!”
    Then a stern man came out, and with a cloth
      Lightly, as one well used to such a feat,
      Swaddled the brute’s propeller and its seat.

  The skies grew darkling, and there went a rumour,
    “The thing is off; he will not fly to-day;”
  And forth we wandered, some in rare ill-humour,
    But not, oh, not the bard.  Yet this I say—­
  There are two kinds of courage:  one’s a boomer
    Avid of gold and glory; this is A,
      Crowned with a palm, and in her hands I see
      Sheaves of press cuttings.  There is also B.

  Not venturesome, this last, to brave the billows,
    To beard the panther in his hidden lair,
  To probe the epiderms of armadillos,
    Nor execute wild cart-wheels in the air;
  But who shall say how much Britannia still owes
    To B, the kind of courage that can bear
      Dauntless to wait, whate’er the skies portend,
     (Having paid entrance) to the bitter end?

  The heavenly hero in his suit of leather
    Soars through Olympus with the world beneath
  Sometimes, and sometimes, owing to the weather,
    Scratches his fixtures in the tempest’s teeth. 
  Shall the high gods, who gaze on both together,
    Count him the nobler, or confer their wreath
      On the brave bull-dog bard, who risks his thews
      Standing about all day in thin-soled shoes?

  EVOE.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  “HERE’S ONE I’M SURE YOU’LL LIKE, TREVOR.”

“WHAT IS IT?”

“ROBINSON CRUSOE.”

“IN WHAT LANGUAGE?”]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

Just as one may say of certain novelists that they write at the top of their voices, so, I think, one might describe Miss VIOLA MEYNELL as writing in a whisper.  This certainly is the effect that Modern Lovers (SECKER) produced upon me.  The gentle method of it invested the story—­which of itself is a very slight thing—­with an odd significance almost impossible to communicate in criticism; but the reading of a few pages will show you what I mean.  The title is apt enough, for the tale is about nothing but love, as it affects a group of five young people, three men and two girls.  Of the girls, who are sisters, Effie Rutherglen is the more important and detailed figure. Effie, in the time before the story opens, had an affair with Oliver Bligh; then, summoned North to live with her futile and uncomprehending parents, she fell (as did her sister Milly and most of the local