“FREE LANCE” HOLIDAY NUMBER.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3575, 14 December 1926, Page 1

“FREE LANCE” HOLIDAY NUMBER.

The Holiday Number of the “New Zealand Free Lance,” which is just out this week,, is obviously intended for the Dominion’s home consumption. Its 72 pages are full of the Christmas holiday spirit, and, from cover to cover, it is replete with bright pictures, laughable cartoons, whimsical verse, and amusing stories, all original, and bristling with point and repartee. The handsome cover in three colours Cannes a design suggestive of “While the Billy Boils,” . and the full-page cartoon just inside the cover shows Dad in his holiday blazer and flannels, taking forty winks —probably after his exertions in chasing Kitty on the bowling green —and now at the mercy of a mischievous urchin. Both pictures form an apt prelude to the joyous programme which follows in picture, rhyme and story. “Javess” lets himself go on “A Merry Christmas,” Miss Nellie Scanlan piques one’s interest with “Christmas Improved,” and Mr. James Cowan does justice to “The Fortunate Islands.” Other writers spin stories appropriate to the season, and there is a rattling collection of jokes grouped beneath the heading “Over the Wine and the Walnuts.” Altogether, a first-class eightpenn’orth.