The life that is flagrantly double,
    Conflicting in conduct and aim,
  Is seldom untainted by trouble
    And commonly closes in shame;
  But no such anxieties pester
    Your dual existence, which links
  The functions of don and of jester—­
        High thought and high jinks.

  Your earliest venture perhaps is
    Unique in the rapture intense
  Displayed in these riotous Lapses
    From all that could savour of sense,
  Recalling the “goaks” and the gladness
    Of one whom we elders adored—­
  The methodical midsummer madness
        Of ARTEMUS WARD.

  With you, O enchanting Canadian,
    We laughed till you gave us a stitch
  In our sides at the wondrous Arcadian
    Exploits of the indolent rich;
  We loved your satirical sniping,
    And followed, far over “the pond,”
  The lure of your whimsical piping
        Behind the Beyond.

  In place of the squalor that stretches
    Unchanged o’er the realist’s page,
  The sunshine that glows in your Sketches
    Is potent our griefs to assuage;
  And when, on your mettlesome charger,
    Full tilt against reason you go,
  Your Lunacy’s finer and Larger
        Than any I know.

  The faults of ephemeral fiction,
    Exotic, erotic or smart,
  The vice of delirious diction,
    The latest excesses of Art—­
  You flay in felicitous fashion,
    With dexterous choice of your tools,
  A scourge for unsavoury passion,
        A hammer for fools.

  And yet, though so freakish and dashing,
    You are not the slave of your fun,
  For there’s nobody better at lashing
    The crimes and the cant of the Hun;
  Anyhow, I’d be proud as a peacock
    To have it inscribed on my tomb: 
  “He followed the footsteps of LEACOCK
        In banishing gloom.”

* * * * *

From an Indian clerk’s letter to his employer:—­

    “I am glad that the War is progressing very favourably for the
    Allies.  We long for the day when, according to Lord Curzon’s
    saying, ‘The Bengal Lancers will petrol the streets of Berlin.’”

Quite the right spirit.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Awe-struck Tommy (from the trenches). “LOOK, BILL—­SOLDIERS!”]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

It may be as well for me to confess at once the humiliating fact that I am not, and never have been, an Etonian.  If that be a serious disqualification for life in general, how much more serious must it be for the particular task of reviewing a book which is of Eton all compact, a book, for example, like Memories of Eton Sixty Years Ago, by A.C.  AINGER, with contributions from N.G.  LYTTELTON and JOHN