We know that stove.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Lady. “CAN YOU SHOW ME SOMETHING SUITABLE FOR A BIRTHDAY PRESENT FOR A GENTLEMAN?”

Shopwalker. “MEN’S FURNISHING DEPARTMENT ON THE NEXT FLOOR, MADAM.”

Lady. “WELL, I DON’T KNOW.  THE GIFT IS FOR MY HUSBAND.”

Shopwalker. “OH, PARDON, MADAM.  BARGAIN COUNTER IN THE BASEMENT.”]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

Not every regiment has the good luck to find for chronicler one who is not only a distinguished soldier but a practical and experienced man of letters.  This fortune is enjoyed by The Gold Coast Regiment (MURRAY) in securing for its historian Sir HUGH CLIFFORD, K.C.M.G., from whose book you may obtain a vivid picture of a phase of the Empire’s effort about which the average Briton has heard comparatively little.  The very strenuous compaigns of the G.C.R., the endurance and achievements of its brave and light-hearted troops, and the heroism and fostering care of its officers, make an inspiring story.  Almost for the first time one gains some real idea of the difficulties of the East African campaign, that prolonged tiger hunt, in which every advantage of mobility, of choice of ground, ambush and the like lay with the enemy; and over very tough physical obstacles, as, for example, rivers so variable that, in the author’s incisive phrase, they “can rarely be relied upon, for very long together, either to furnish drinking-water or to refrain from impeding transport.”  It is interesting to note that Sir HUGH, while giving every credit to the remarkable personality of the German commander, entirely demolishes the theory, so grateful to our sentimentalists, that the absence of surrenders on the part of the enemy’s black troops was due to any devotion to VON LETTOW-VORBECK as leader; the explanation being the characteristic German dodge of creating from the natives a military caste so highly privileged, and consequently unpopular with their fellows, that surrender, involving return to native civilian life, became a practical impossibility.

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Much the best part, and a good best, of Sir Harry (COLLINS) is the opening, which is not only delightful in itself but contains almost the sole example of a chapter-long letter (of the kind usually so unconvincing in fiction) in which I have found it possible to believe as being actually written by one character to another.  The explanation of which is that this one is supposed to be sent to his wife by the new Vicar of Royd, himself a successful novelist, on a visit of inspection to his future parish.  The efforts of Mrs. Grant, at home, to disentangle essential facts from the complications of the literary manner form as pleasant and human an introduction to a story as