A NAVAL OCCASION.
Awful effect on an entire ship's company of distributing a consignment of monster peppermint balls—a present from the shore.
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
It came as something of a shock to me to find that the title of Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick's latest novel was In Other Days (Methuen). Because I have always regarded her as the historian essentially of the present, and a name like that might cover any age from powder and farthingales to woad and battleaxes. However, to spare you my alarm, I will explain at once that the "other days" are those that ended in July of last year. So, as most of us have at least a dim memory of that placid time, and as all will enjoy being pleasantly reminded of it, there is no cause for anxiety. In Other Days is to some extent the story of a black sheep, who obstinately refuses to point any kind of moral. Perhaps this is what makes it so human and generally comfortable. Simeon Cloudesley was an artist who deserted his wife and daughter, leaving them to find a refuge in the dreary home of some pompous in-laws. When the daughter was seventeen a visit to a school-friend opened her eyes to the fact that life contained happier places than her present abode, so she stirred her mother to revolt, and off went the pair of them to live on a tiny income in a Cornish artist colony. Which would have been all very well, for the colony was a delicious place, and full of just those delightful people whom Mrs. Sidgwick can describe so attractively; but the trouble was that the colonists, being artists first and moralists afterwards, all simply worshipped the name of Simeon Cloudesley; and when that wicked man himself subsequently turned up, not only undeniably great but exasperatingly charming—well, you see what a difficult situation was created, above all for his violently disapproving daughter. Mrs. Sidgwick deserves thanks not only for having written a pleasant and companionable story, but for a very original handling of an ancient theme. See if you do not think so.
Had I to go forth into the appallingly cold and blightingly windy parts of the world, I should without hesitation select Sir Douglas Mawson as my leader; and this not only because in The Home of the Blizzard (Heinemann) he proves himself possessed of the qualities that invite confidence and affection, but also because I remember vividly the genius for leadership that he showed—and to which Professor Davis testified—in the journey to the South Magnetic Pole during the Shackleton Expedition of 1907-9. A few months after his return he was possessed with the idea of exploring the region, his "land of hope and glory," that lies between Cape Adare and Gaussberg; and now he gives us the story of the Australasian Expedition of 1911-14. To everyone concerned in the making of the history that is set forth in these two volumes the warmest praise much be given, but it will still fall short of their due. In every set instance the leader of this band of young men was well
