Boom! Boom! 'Twill bring in cent. per cent.,
With that Big Drum, Advertisement.
Nonsense, with _nous_ discreetly blent,
Finds the world cheated--and content.
But "make your game" while yet there's room,
For novel shapes of quackery. Doom
Awaits us in the outer gloom:
A day _may_ come when Bosh _won't_ "Boom"!
_Chorus._
That's how we "boom" to-day!
Tra-la! We "boom" to-day!
Ha-ha! We "boom" to-day!
Tra-la! We "boom" to-day!
[_And so on till further orders._
* * * * *
[Illustration: "ASSISTED EDUCATION."]
* * * * *
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.--Quoth one of the Baron's Assistants to his Chief,
"Sir, those who love the personality, and venerate the memory of CHARLES
DICKENS, will thank Miss HOGARTH who has selected, Mr. LAWRENCE HUTTON who
has edited, and OSGOOD, MCILVAINE & CO. who publish, a series of letters
addressed by BOZ to WILKIE COLLINS. They bear date between the years 1851
and 1870, were found among COLLINS'S papers after his death, and prove not
the least precious of his possessions. _Foster's Life of Dickens_ will
undoubtedly remain the medium through which the outer world shall know the
great novelist." "True," interposes the Baron, "that certainly is one way
in which admiration for the works of the great novelist will be foster'd
among us. You agree? Of course you do. Proceed, sweet warbler, your
observations interest me much." Whereupon the warbler thus addressed
continued. "But, Sir, we are all conscious of a certain unpleasant taste
those volumes leave in the mouth. Some of the incidents recorded, and many
of the letters, present DICKENS with undue prominence in a possible phase
of his character, as a ruthless tradesman in literature and lecturing, with
some tendency to be overbearing in his social relations. In this little
volume of letters to his old familiar friend we find him at his best,
whether as a worker in literature or as a critic of other people's work."