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[Illustration:  HUMOURS OF A REMOUNT DEPOT.

Sergeant. “FRIGHTENED OF ’IM, ARE YOU?  DIDN’T YOU ‘AVE NOTHIN’ TO DO WITH ANIMALS BEFORE YE JOINED UP?”

Recruit. “YESSIR.  I WAS A LION-TAMER.”]

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(By Mr. Punch’s Staff of Learned Clerks.)

MR. CONRAD’S new hero is an unnamed chief-mate who gets his first command to a sailing vessel, also unnamed—­queer and of course quite deliberate instance of the author’s reticent, allusive method which is so entirely plausible.  Her last captain, who had some mad savage hatred of ship and crew, died aboard her and was buried in latitude 8 deg. 20’.  The chief-mate, who got the vessel back to port and remained under her new captain, is convinced that the dead man haunts her vengefully; and one desperate accident after another, racking a crew overwhelmed with fever, almost persuades the captain to share the mate’s illusion that 8 deg. 20’—­The Shadow Line (DENT)—­is possessed by the dead scoundrel.  I found the book less interesting as a yarn than as an example of the astonishingly conscious and perfect artistry of this really great master of the ways of men and words.  Mr. CONRAD never made me believe that the new captain would go so near sharing his mate’s superstitious panic (which is perhaps because I know little of sailor-men save what he has taught me); and in the incident, so curiously and deliberately detailed, of his finding the quinine bottles filled with a worthless substitute, and letting them “each in turn” slip to ground, I had again the most unusual shock of being unable to accept the credibility of his invention.  This is so rare an experience that it only throws into relief for me the fine craft of this most brilliant of our impressionists, who tells so much with such delicate strokes, so conscientiously considered, so unerringly conveyed.

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This is the End (MACMILLAN) is the kind of book that only youth can write—­youth at its best.  It has the qualities and defects of its parentage; but the qualities, a fine careless rapture, sensitive vision, a wayward and jolly fantasy, challenging provocativeness, faintly malicious humour, are dominant.  Miss STELLA BENSON will grow out of her youthful cynicisms and intolerances, will focus her effects, without losing any of her substantial equipment.  This is by no means the end.  It is the second step of a very brilliant beginning.  Already it shows improvement upon her first clever book, I Pose; a surer touch, a finer restraint.  What is it all about?  Does that matter?  It is the manner of the telling rather than what is told that constitutes the charm.  If I tell, you that Jay runs away from a respectable home, and, after a grievous experiment as a bolster-filler, becomes a bus-conductor, has a romantic friendship with a middle-aged married man, and marries the faithful Mr. Morgan, her dead brother’s soldier friend, I have told you just nothing at all.  I will merely add that you will be foolish if you miss this book.