French?  All elegance equips it,
  But how oft on foreign lips it
      Runs awry;
  German, tainted, execrated,
  Is for ages relegated
      To the sty.

  As for brand-new tongues invented
  By professors discontented
      With the old,
  Well, the prospect of a “panto”
  Played and sung in Esperanto
      Leaves me cold.

* * * * *

    “One of the most striking—­and satisfactory—­features of the new
    restaurant regime is the disappearance of the bread-basket.”—­Daily
    Telegraph.

Or, at any rate, a considerable shrinkage in its contour.

* * * * *

“If there must be duplication of electric light installations, the apparati might, at least, be made uniform.  And it would not be expecting too much if they were made in some way to harmonise with the telephone service.”—­Australian Paper.

Or even with the Latin Grammar?

* * * * *

    “5-Seater Car for Sale; must sell; chauffeur at the Front; own body
    cost over L73.  What offers?—­RECTOR.”—­Times.

These personal details seem to us a little out of place in a commercial transaction.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  John. “BUT WHY MUSTN’T WE HAVE NEW BREAD ANY MORE?”

Joan. “WHY, DON’T YOU SEE, SILLY?  IF WE EAT YESTERDAY’S AND SAVE UP TO-DAY’S THERE’LL ALWAYS BE SOME FOR TO-MORROW.  THEN THE GERMANS CAN’T STARVE US.”]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

In these days, when everybody has his reminiscences, there should still be a welcome for so genial a volume as A Soldier’s Memories (JENKINS), into which Major-General Sir GEORGE YOUNGHUSBAND has gathered his “Recollections of People, Places and Things.”  The title truly indicates the character of the contents, which are exactly what you would expect from a plain blunt man, who loves his friends, and equally loves a good story about them, at his own or their expense, impartially.  The anecdotes in the book are legion, and the actors in them range from troopers to generals, and beyond.  KING EDWARD, their present Majesties, Sir DOUGLAS HAIG ("a nice-looking clean little boy in an Eton jacket and collar”) all figure in the author’s pictures of the past, which include also a highly characteristic study of WILLIAM THE FRIGHTFUL, congratulating the “citizens of Salisbury,” represented by a handful of curious urchins, upon their “beautiful and ancient cathedral.” (One can fancy the unspoken addition in the Imperial mind, “And what a target for Bertha!”) Many of Sir GEORGE’S pages are devoted to stories of the Boer campaign, that old unhappy far-off thing that seems somehow, as one looks back to-day, further off than Waterloo.  In fine, a book that all Service folk, and many besides them, will find a treasure-house of good stories, of exactly the kind that should be certain of their appeal now, when we are all, or like to think ourselves, soldiers in the greatest of England’s wars, and inheritors of the traditions here shown in the making.