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[Illustration:  Lady Customer.  “BUT ARE YOU SURE THAT THIS CHAIR IS GENUINE CHARLES II.?  IT LOOKS RATHER NEW.”

Fake Antique Dealer (off his guard).  “I’M SORRY, MADAM, WE HAVE NO REAL ANTIQUES IN STOCK.  YOU SEE WE CAN’T GET THE LABOUR.”]

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    OUR KINDLY CRITICS.

“It is Mr. Wells’s great advantage as a preacher that he has a prose style instinct with life and beauty.  Somewhere he speaks of a cathedral as a ‘Great, still place, urgent with beauty’; somewhere else he says, ’The necessary elements of religion can be written on a postcard.’”—­Daily Chronicle.

“Callisthenes” must look to his laurels.

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Extract from the letter of a lady who helps in parish work and is full of agricultural enthusiasm:—­

    “Next week I am going to start digging for the vicar.”

Assuming that the reverend gentleman was inadvertently buried alive, we deprecate this delay.

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