Old VILLIAM and young Vistling JOE are rivals, vot vere pardners! 
  And some vill back the Brummyites, and some the Grand Old
          Harward’ners;
  But vichsoever from the fight of victory be the snatcher,
  The Midlands own a champion in the Brummagem Birdcatcher.

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[Illustration:  Mrs. Gusher.  “OH, GOOD-BYE, SIR JOHN.  SO SORRY NOT TO HAVE FOUND YOUR MOST CHARMING WIFE AT HOME.”

Sir John.  “THANKS—­THANKS!  BY THE WAY, LET ME ASSURE YOU I’VE ONLY GOT ONE,—­AND—­”

(Thinks that the remainder of the sentence is “better understood than expressed.")]

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“A ROYAL LINE” (IN THE BILLS).—­The successor to King Henry the Eighth (at the Lyceum) will be King Lear the First.  “Le Roi est mort!  Vive le Roi!”

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

The Baron pauses in the midst of his varied literary and philosophic studies to look into No. 46, Vol. iv., Part ii., of Our Celebrities, a publication which has been admirably conducted by the late and the present Count ASTROROG, which is the title, when he is at home, of the eminent photographer and proprietor of the Walery-Gallery.  First comes life-like portrait of the stern Sir EDWARD W. WATKIN, on whose brow Time, apparently, writes no wrinkles, though Sir EDWARD could put most of us up to a few.  Nor, strange to say, are there any lines on his countenance, probably because he has so many other lines, existing and contemplated, in his eye.

But ’tis not alone thy inky cloak, good Sir EDWARD, that attracts the Baron, nor is it the business-like profile of THOMAS DE GREY, sixth Lord Walsingham, Chairman of the Ensilage Committee, that gives the Baron matter for special admiration; but it is the perfectly charming portrait of “‘DAISY PLESS’ H.S.H. the Princess HENRY OF PLESS,” which rivets the Baron’s attention, and causes him to exclaim, “She is pretty, Pless her!” Miss CORNWALLIS WEST, but now a DAISY, now a Princess, came up as a flower at Ruthin Castle, and “in 1891 Prince HENRY OF PLESS,” says the brief narrative written by A. BULL (an example of “a bull and no mistake”) “wooed and won the beauty of the Season,”—­lucky ’ARRY PLESS!—­and then Prince ’ARRY took his bride to Furstenstein, in Silesia, “a fine schloss, with beautiful gardens and terraces,”—­in short, “a Pleasaunce.”  Count ASTROROG may do, as he has done, many excellent photographic portraits, but this one will be uncommonly “hard to beat,” and King of Photographers as he seems to be, it is not every day that he has so charming a subject as Princess DAISY presented to him.  Receive, Count ASTROROG-WALERY, of the Walery-Gallery, without any raillery, the congratulations most sincere of the

BARON DE BOOK-WORMS.

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