The “Beanato.”—­Sensational discovery; the result of a cross between an Early Rose potato and a scarlet-runner.  Will take the place of ramblers on pergolas.  Blooms brilliantly all the summer; festoons of khaki fruit with green facings in the autumn.  Retains the lusciousness of the bean with the full floury flavour of the tuber.

“Argus.”—­The potato with a hundred eyes.  Never sprouts in less than ninety-eight places.  Should be put through the mincing-machine before planting.

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[Illustration:  “LOOK HERE, MISS!  YOU’VE TAKEN A BIT OUT OF MY EAR!”

“SORRY, SIR; BUT, YOU SEE, I’VE BEEN ON THE DISTRICT RAILWAY FOR THE LAST THREE MONTHS PUNCHING TICKETS.”]

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War-Work.

“LADY.—­Will any lady exercise a terrier (good-tempered), daily, for a small remuneration?”—­Bournmouth Daily Echo.

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Kilties Dumbfounded.

Extract from Brigade Orders (Highland Brigade):—­

    “Socks must be changed and feet greased at least every 24 hours.  Socks
    can be dried by being placed in trouser pockets.”

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

Zella Sees Herself (HEINEMANN) is an unusual and very subtle analysis of a single character.  The author, E.M.  DELAFIELD, has made an almost uncannily penetrating study of the development of a poseuse. Zella posed instinctively, from the days when as a child she alienated her father by attitudinising (with the best intentions) about her mother’s funeral.  It became a habit with her.  In Rome, before the Arch of Titus, she thought more of what she might acceptably say about it than of any wonder or beauty in the thing itself.  She fooled the honest man who imagined he was in love with her by making herself, for the time, just what her fatal facility for such perception told her he would most like her to be.  The skill of the book is proved by the increasing anxiety, and even agitation, with which one awaits the moment that shall fulfil the title.  It comes, bringing with it that almost intolerable tragedy of the soul, the black loneliness that waits upon insincerity.  Then poor deluded Zella, seeing herself, sees also the fate that eventually befalls those who have deliberately falsified the signals by which alone one human heart can speak to and assist another.  That is all the plot of the story, told with remarkable insight and a care that is both sympathetic and wholly unsparing.  I am mistaken if you will not find it one of the most absorbing within recent experience.  But I am not saying that it may not leave you just a little uncomfortable.

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