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[Illustration:  Mistress.  “OH, HE’S GONE INTO THE TRENCHES, HAS HE?  WELL, YOU MUSTN’T WORRY.”

Maid.  “OH, NO, MA’AM, I’VE LEFT OFF WORRYING NOW.  HE CAN’T WALK OUT WITH ANYONE ELSE WHILE HE’S THERE.”]

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(BY MR. PUNCH’S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS.)

The idea of publishing Frederick the Great:  The Memoirs of his Reader, Henri de Catt (1758-1760) (CONSTABLE) was that we are all so passionate against Prussianism that we want to plank down our money for two volumesful of observations at first hand about the man who was the source and origin of that dark and swollen stream.  Personally, we doubt the general zeal in this matter—­not of Prussianism but of FREDERICK.  However, DE CATT, looking at a king from a queer angle, is extraordinarily diverting.  “Reader” was a euphemism for a patient audience, including claque.  FREDERICK, incognito on a Dutch barge, picked up the young scholar and marked him down as one who could be induced by florins and flattery to take on the job of listening to his patron’s bad French verses and his after-dinner flutings of little things of his own, his approving observations on his own conduct, his battles, his philosophy of life and politics, no doubt calculating that it would all be jotted down on fateful scraps of paper and given a favourable colouring for the edification of the world.  Well, the great FREDERICK put it over me all right.  Frankly I rather liked the old fellow, his old clothes (there was at least no shining armour swank at Potsdam in those days), his practice of solemnly cutting capers for the benefit of his “reader,” though I know not explicitly what a caper is, his Billingsgate language, his real opinion of VOLTAIRE, his charming, if possibly rare, acts of magnanimity, his moderation in war, which was not all hypocrisy.  In fact, if you expect an ogre you will be disappointed.  He could give the latest Hohenzollern points in a good many directions.  I ought, of course, to add that a learnedly allusive preface by Lord ROSEBERY graces the volume, and that the very competent translation is by F.S.  FLINT.

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These are days when the more we know about Russia and things Russian the better.  Specially timely, then, is the appearance, in an English translation, of The Fishermen (STANLEY PAUL), by DIMITRY GREGOROVITSH.  It is a wonderfully appealing story, which has been put into English—­presumably by Dr. ANGELO RAPPOPORT, though he is only credited on the title-page with the authorship of the Preface—­in such a way that the spirit of the original is admirably preserved.  I had not read a couple of pages before the charm of the style laid hold upon me.  The story is quite simple, concerned only with a group of peasants, fisher-folk, living on the banks of a