Alf.  But look ’ere, my dear girl, I can’t leave you here all by yourself, you know!

Miss S. I daresay Mr. PERKINS will take care of me.

    [Mr. P. assents, with effusion.

Alf. (watching them move away—­with bitterness).  I wish all Niggers were put down by Act of Parliament, I do!  Downright noosances—­that’s what they are!

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

[Illustration:  Ulysses on Tour.]

Ulysses has been travelling again, and the record of his journeyings is set forth in The Modern Odyssey, which CASSELL & Co. publish in one volume, with some charming illustrations in callotype.

My Baronite notes a quaint disposition on the part of the old gentleman to begin at the very beginning.  Thus, when he lands in New York, he furnishes a brief account of COLUMBUS, and how he came to discover America.  The early history of Australia, and eke of China, are dealt with in the same instructive manner.  This is all very well for ULYSSES, who comes fresh on the scene, and learns for the first time all about the Genoese, about Captain COOK, and how “a little more than a century ago eleven ships sailed from England,” anchored in the Bay where now Sydney stands, and—­strange to say!—­did not find a populous city, but only green fields and a river running into the sea. Pour nous autres, age has somewhat withered the bloom of this story, and it might have been left peacefully slumbering in the Encyclopaedias.  But it can be skipped, and, for the rest, there will be found a swift succession of pictures of life and scenery in the Greater Britain that girdles the world.  ULYSSES must have been much struck with the change since he first went a gipsying.  But of that he discreetly says nothing.

BARON DE BOOK-WORMS & Co.

* * * * *

WE’VE GOT OUR LYNX EYE ON HIM!—­In the Times’ legal reports for Tuesday, July 26, 1892, Queen’s Bench Division, Colonel FITZGEORGE sued a Mr. ROLLS CALVERT LINK.  Mr. CANNOT defended LINK.  But CANNOT Could Not do much for his client LINK, who did not appear.  Evidently, “The Missing Link.”

* * * * *

“COURT ON!”

[Illustration:  Stephensonius, B.C. (date uncertain), qui Jacobum Fidelem scripsit. (From an old Bronze Medal.)]

The “Triple Bill” still going strong at the Court.  The New Sub, a smartly-written little One-Act Play, by SEYMOUR HICKS, notable for good performance all round, but especially for the rendering of Mrs. Darlington, by Miss GERTRUDE KINGSTON, of Major Ensor, by BRANDON THOMAS, and of Second-Lieutenant Darlington, by Mr. ERNEST BERTRAM—­uncommonly Earnest BERTRAM.  The Scene is in a Hut at Shorncliffe.  Hutcaetera.  If Lieutenant Crookendon’s catch—­phrase about “a funny world” were repeated just about five times less frequently than it is, the piece, the part, and the public would be distinctly gainers.