“Sergeant James,” we said, “how goes it?” but the Sergeant looked askance;
  Not for him the mazy phalanx or the military dance;
  He could only sit and suffer, with a most portentous frown,
  While a crowd of little gipsies turned the whole thing upside down.

  Aunt Maria next surprised us:  for her massive back was grooved,
  And her adenoids gave trouble, so we had them all removed;
  If we hadn’t done it neatly she’d have gone and joined the dead,
  As it is she hops politely while she walks upon her head.

  So we’ll all fill up a cheque-form on some celebrated Banks—­
  It’s a pity that a cheque-form should be made so much of blanks—­
  And we’ll give the Bank of England all the credit that is due
  To her hoards of gold and silver; and I wish they weren’t so few.

* * * * *

“Mr. ——­ has been actively connected with the last two Victory Loan drives, in the last one raising $15,282,000.  As an appreciation of his work the salesmen presented him with a (fifteen million dollar) diamond ring.”—­Canadian Paper.

We are glad that something was left for the Loan.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Small Boy (who has been promised a visit to the Zoo to-morrow).  “I HOPE WE SHALL HAVE A BETTER DAY FOR IT THAN NOAH HAD.”]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

I found myself as much taken with the title of The Great Interruption (HUTCHINSON) as with any of the dozen short war-stories that Mr. W.B.  MAXWELL has collected in the volume.  Yet these are admirable of their kind—­“muffin-tales” is my own name for them, of just the length to hold your attention for a solitary tea-hour and each with some novelty of idea or distinction in treatment that makes the next page worth turning.  The central theme of all is, of course, the same:  the War in its effect upon people at the fighting front and elsewhere.  Perhaps it was inevitable that Mr. MAXWELL should betray a certain faintly cynical amusement in his dealings with the people of elsewhere.  Two of the stories especially—­“The Strain of It” and “What Edie Regretted”—­are grimly illustrative of some home-keeping types for whom the great tragedy served only as an opportunity for social advancement or a pleasantly-thrilling excuse for futilities.  There will be no reader who will not smilingly acknowledge the justice of these sketches; not one of us whose neighbours could not supply an original for them.  Fortunately the book has other tales of which the humour is less caustic; probably of intention Mr. MAXWELL’S pictures of war as the soldier knew it, its hardships and compensations, contrast poignantly with the others.  On the active-service side my choice would undoubtedly be for the admirably cheery and well-told “Christmas is Christmas” (not exactly about fraternization), as convincing a realisation of the Front at its best as any I remember to have read in more pretentious volumes.