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[Illustration:  AN INCOMPLETE BIRTHDAY PRESENT.

Ethel.  “WHAT’S THE MATTER, MAMMA?”

Mamma.  “ETHEL, THERE ARE YOUR NEW GOLF THINGS JUST COME, THAT I ORDERED FOR YOU FROM EDINBORO, AND—­ISN’T IT PROVOKING?—­THEY’VE ACTUALLY FORGOTTEN THE LINKS!”]

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

PROFESSOR HUBERT HERKOMER has “dried his impressions,” and given them to the public in a handsome volume brought out by MACMILLAN & CO.  It is all interesting even to a non-artistic laic, for there is much “dry point” of general application in the Professor’s lectures.  Yet, amid all his learning and his light-hearted style, there is occasionally a strain of melancholy, as when he pictures himself to us as “etching and scratching on a bed of burr.”  Painful, very; likewise Dantesque,—­infernally Dantesque.  But there is another and a more cheerful view which the Baron prefers to take, and that is, the word-picture which the Professor gives us of his little room in his Bavarian home, where he says, “Under the seat by the table are my bottles”—­ah! quite Rabelaisian this!—­“with the mordants, and my dishes for the plates.”  Isn’t this rare!  “I should add, there is a stove near the door.”  O Sybarite!  Doesn’t this suggest the notion of a delightful little dinner a deux!  With “the mordants,”—­which is, of course, a generic name for sauces of varied piquancy,—­and with his “dishes” artistically prepared and set before “the plates,” as in due order they should be, he is as correct as he is original.  A true bon vivant.  The Baron highly commends the book, which only for the rare etchings it contains, is well worth the attention of every amateur of Art, and that he, the Baron, may, one of these days, dine with him, the Professor, is the sincere wish of his truly, and everybody else’s truly,

THE BARON DE BOOK-WORMS.

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“STUFF AND (NO) NONSENSE!”—­“Begorra, ’tis an ill wind that blows nobody any good,” said The O’GORMAN DIZER, when he heard that on account of the Influenza there was a Papal dispensation from fasting and abstinence throughout the United kingdom.

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IN THE SEAT OF WISDOM.

At a meeting of the Drury Lane Lodge of Freemasons, said the Daily Telegraph, “with all due solemnity was Mr. S.B.  BANCROFT installed in the Chair of King SOLOMON.”  This, whether an easy chair or not, ought to be the seat of wisdom.  Poor SOLOMON, the very much married man, was not, however, particularly wise in his latter days, but, of course, this chair was the one used by the Great Grand Master Mason before it was taken from under him, and he fell so heavily, “never to rise again.”  How fortunate for the Drury Lane Masons to have obtained this chair of SOLOMON’s.  No doubt it was one of his wise descendants, of whom there are not a few in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane, who consented to part with this treasure to the Masonic Lodgers.  So here’s King SOLOMON BUSY BANCROFT’s good health!  “Point, left, right!  One, two, three!” (They drink.)