"With the New Year," says a Baronite, "there is a great desire to
turn over a new leaf." Such intentions are easily satisfied by
the _Back-Loop Pocket Diaries_, where leaves for this purpose are
plentifully supplied by JOHN WALKER & CO. Likewise DE LA RUE & CO.
offer Diaries and Memorandum Books in every size and form, and this
year they have a patent clip to keep the leaf down. Ought to be
advertised as "clipping!"
The Baron's Baronites look into a box of Christmas books and find,
first--_Westward with Columbus_. By GORDON STABLES, M.D.C.M. Graphic
account. "STABLES must have been in excellent form when writing this,"
observes a Baronite; "evidently he was not Livery Stables."--_Wreck of
the Golden Fleece._ By ROBERT LEIGHTON. A capital sea story, plenty
of rocks and wrecks, hardships and plague-ships, and all sorts of
wonderful adventures.--_The White Conquerors of Mexico_, by KIRK
MUNROE, tells how CORTES and his Spaniards, being white, did MONTEZUMA
and his Aztic natives brown.--_With the Sea Kings._ F. H. WINDER. The
youthful amateur salt will find everything here to satisfy all his
cravings and _See-kings_. "_Winder_ has taken great _panes_ with
this," says Baronitess.
"My clients," quoth the Baron, "will do well to read BARING-GOULD'S
cheap _Jack Zita_." Fascinating book by reason of its picturesque
effects and its description of life in the Fens at the commencement of
the present century. "I wonder," muses the Baron, "whether any of my
readers, being Cantabs, will call to mind how some thirty-five years
ago the names of those eminent amateur pugilists J-CK SH-FF-LD,
F-RG-SS-N D-V-E, L-NN-X C-NN-NGH-M, and others were associated with
life in the Fens as it existed at that time, and how these pupils of
NAT LANGHAM'S now and again disputed the championship of a certain Fen
Tavern, won it, and for a time held it? Some undergraduates were hand
and glove with the Fenners--not the cricket-ground, so styled, but the
dwellers in Fen-land; and on occasion they were hand to hand without
the 'glove.'" Why this question? "Because," says the Baron, "one of
the scenes so graphically described in the chapter, headed 'Burnt
Hats,' might have been witnessed at the time I have referred to by
any undergraduate sufficiently venturesome to accompany those
fisticuffers." As for the plot, well, 'tis a good plot, and has always
been a good plot, and "twill serve, 'twill serve." But it is the
BARING-GOULD flavouring that makes the dish acceptable to the jaded
palate of oldest novel-devourer.