A Peer of great wealth, striking physiognomy, affectionate disposition and wonderful general knowledge will pay the sum of twenty thousand pounds to any psychiatric practitioner who succeeds in eliminating from his system the microbe of filmolatry, the ravages of which have latterly threatened to infect his monumental mind with histrionic monomania highly deleterious to the best interests of the community.

A neo-Georgian poet, disciple of FREUD, pacificist and vegetarian, will gladly pay five pounds to any psychopathic suggestionist who will extirpate from his subconsciousness the lingering relics of an antipathy to syncopated rhythms which retard his progress towards a complete mastery of the technique of amorphous bombination.

* * * * *

ANOTHER “SUBSTITUTE.”

    “For the first time on record snow has fallen at Albany, Western
    Australia.

    The Food Ministry announces that this surplus will therefore be
    available for home jam-making.”—­Provincial Paper.

* * * * *

    “The Roman poets, all of them inveterate Cockneys, talk of the joys of
    the country, of purling streams and lowing kine and frisking lamps.”—­
    Weekly Paper.

And their verses occasionally smell of them.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Prospective Mistress. “ARE YOU A CONSISTENTLY EARLY RISER?”

Maid. “NOT ARF!  WHY, MUM, IN MY LAST PLACE THE MASTER’S PET NAME FOR ME WAS ‘THE EARLY WORM.’”]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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

Rescue (DENT) is a story in the authentic manner of Mr. JOSEPH CONRAD at his unapproachable best.  If it is true, as one has heard, that the book was begun twenty-five years ago and resumed lately, this explains but does nothing to minimize a fact upon which we can all congratulate ourselves.  The setting is the shallow seas of the Malay coast, where Lingard, an adventurer (most typically CONRAD) whose passion in life is love for his brig, has pledged himself to aid an exiled young Rajah in the recovery of his rights.  At the last moment however, when his plans are at point of action, the whole scheme is thwarted by the stranding of a private yacht containing certain persons whose rescue (complicated by his sudden subjection to the woman of the party) eventually involves Lingard in the loss of fortune and credit.  Perhaps you can suppose what Mr. CONRAD makes of a theme so congenial; how the tale moves under his hand in what was once well called that “smoky magnificence” of atmosphere, just permitting the reader to observe at any moment so much and no more of its direction.  Of the style it would now be superfluous to speak.  It has been given to Mr. CONRAD, working in what is