* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

My Face is My Fortune, by Messrs. PHILIPS and FENDALL.  Why don’t they agree to spell both names with an “F,” and make it FILLIPS and FENDALL.  I fancy that FENDALL couldn’t do without the sensational fillips.  This story excites curiosity throughout the first volume, and then, in the other volume, satisfies it in so disappointing and commonplace a fashion as to suggest the idea that one of the authors, becoming weary of his share in the work, suddenly chucked it up, and said, “Oh, bother! let’s finish anyhow;” and then the other collaborateur, whichever it was, did finish it as best and as quickly as he could.  There is evidence of laziness or of lack of invention in the story.  If it were for the first time in fiction that a secret is learnt by some one hiding behind some pantomime plants in a conservatory, then too much praise could not be bestowed on the ingenious devisers of so strong and original a situation.  But as “we know that situation,—­he comes from Sheffield,” and as it has done duty some scores of times before, on or off the stage, why, the thoroughgoing novel-reader shakes his head and asks, “Couldn’t they have devised something better than this between them?” “I expected much from this combination in Authorship, and am disappointed,” says the candid BARON DE BOOK-WORMS.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  WHAT OUR ARTIST (THE NEWLY-MARRIED ONE) HAS TO PUT UP WITH.

Our Artist.  “JUST LOOK, DARLING!  I WAS SHORT OF CANVASSES, SO I’VE STRETCHED A CLEAN POCKET-HANDKERCHIEF!—­SEE HOW SPLENDIDLY IT TAKES THE PAINT!”

His Prudent Little Wife..  “OH, JOHN DEAR, HOW EXTRAVAGANT OF YOU! IT’LL NEVER COME OUT!”]

* * * * *

THE ADOPTED CHILD.

“Last year the CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER frittered away his resources in a number of small remissions, for which hardly anyone was grateful.  This year he squanders the greater part of his surplus in providing for Free, or—­as the phrase is—­Assisted Education—­an innovation for which there is hardly any genuine demand, and which a very large class of the community, including many of the most loyal supporters of the Government, view with rooted distrust.”—­The Standard.

MRS. GAMP (the “Old Regular”) loquitur:—­

  “More changes, too, to come afore we have done with changes!”
  Ah!  I said that to good Mister MOULD years agone; which ’ow memory
        ranges
  All over them dear “Good Old Times,” as I wish them wos back agen,
        bless ’em! 
  Which the new ones ain’t much to my mind; there’s too many fresh
        “monthlies” to mess ’em. 
  No; monthlying ain’t wot it were; the perfession’s too open, a lump. 
  Nusses now ain’t no more like old SAIREY, no not than the old Aldgit
        Pump. 
  Like the Cristial Palluses fountings; A Pilgjian’s Projiss is life,
  And a Nuss ain’t no more like a Nuss than a Wife now resembles a
        Wife.