why I stole it.

Renée (eagerly). Let me guess. Your wife was starving—

Mérital (astounded). Wonderful! How ever did you know?

Renée. —and you meant to repay the money.

Mérital. More and more marvellous. Yes, Renée, that was how it was. But it hardly does justice to the affair. It is too short. I want to tell you the story of my whole life and then you will understand. Watch my face carefully and observe how it works; notice the constant movement of my hands; listen to the inflections of my voice. This is going to be the longest speech ever made by an actor-manager, and you mustn't miss a moment of it. H'r'm! Now then. (Nobly) I was born fifty-three years ago. My father....

Renée (half-an-hour later). I still love you.

Mérital (with some truth). What a love yours is!

Enter Daniel, Julien and Georgette Mérital.

Daniel. Father, we have a confession to make. For some time we doubted your innocence. Your face—well, you'd have doubted it yourself if you'd seen it.

Mérital (taking his hand affectionately). Ah! Daniel, I see I must tell you the story of my life. (Excitement among the audience.) And you too, Julien. (Panic.) Yes, and—little Georgette!

SAFETY CURTAIN.

A. A. M.

THE EARTHLY PARADISE.

Coster. "SEE THAT, LIZ? THERE'S A COUNTRY FOR YOU!"

PEACEFUL PERSUASION.

(JONES IS NOT NATURALLY A GENEROUS MAN.)

THE ROMANCE OF A BATTLESHIP.

(From the Navy League Annual of 1916.)

I have just returned (writes a Naval correspondent) from an interesting visit to the condemned battleship, H.M.S. Indefensible, which is now anchored off Brightlingsea, in the charge of retired petty-officer Herbert Tompkins and his wife.

The history of H.M.S. Indefensible, as gathered from the lips of her present curator, is so romantic as to be worthy of permanent record. In reply to my first question, "Whom did she belong to first of all?" Mr. Tompkins said, "Well, she was ordered first of all by the Argentine Republic, but, owing to a change of Government, they sold her to the Italians. I remember the launch at Barrow quite well," he said. "It was a mighty fine show, with the Italian Ambassador and his wife—the Magnifico Pomposo, they called her, I think it was—and there was speechifying and hurraying and enough champagne drunk to float her. That was just three years ago: a super-Dreadnought, they called her."

"Then how did the British Government get her?"

"Lor bless you, Sir, that didn't come for a long time yet. Ye see, Italy shortly afterwards made an alliance with Denmark, and, wishing to do the Danes a good turn, she arranged to sell them the Magnifico Pomposo at cost price—about three millions I think it was. But immediately afterwards the Russo-Chinese war broke out, and the Chinese offered the Danes four millions for the Dannebrog, as they had called her, so by the time the engines were put into her she had been rechristened the Hoang-Ho. But the war never came off: you remember that Mr. ROOSEVELT settled it by fighting a single combat with the Russian champion after he had been appointed President of China; so the Chinese leased the Hoang-Ho to the King of SIAM for four years at a million a year."

"Did she get out to Siam, then?"

"Oh no, Sir, no fear. The crew ran her on the Goodwin Sands on her trial trip, and there she stuck for a year. Before they got her off the Siamese had been released from their bargain by the Hague Tribunal, Mr. ROOSEVELT had resigned the Presidency of China for that of Mexico, and the new President sold the Chulalongkorn back to Great Britain. Of course by that time she was quite obsolete, so they called her the Indefensible, and put a nucleus crew on board for a few months. Then when Mr. LLOYD GEORGE became Prime Minister, they offered her to Canada as a gift; but the Canadians didn't like her name. And when Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL came back last month he decided that she was to be made a target; but last week I heard she was to be sold for scrap-iron."

"Then whom does she belong to now?"

"Well, Sir, some says she belongs to Canada, and others say she's British, and others say she belongs to Mr. CHURCHILL, but in a manner of speaking I think she rightly belongs to Mrs. Tompkins and me."

"On making enquiries at the Hospital this afternoon, we learn that the deceased is as well as can be expected."—Jersey Evening Post.

It would, of course, be foolish to expect much.

A NEW BOOK OF BEAUTY.

A hundred years ago they had line, engravings by CHARLES HEATH, and the long-necked, ringleted ladies looked wistfully or simperingly at you. I have several examples: Caskets, Albums, Keepsakes.

This book is different. The steel engravers have long since all died of starvation; and here are photographs only, but there are many more of them, and (strange innovation!) there are more gentlemen than ladies. For this preponderance there is a good commercial reason, as any student of the work will quickly discover, for we are now entering a sphere of life where the beauty of the sterner sex (if so severe a word can be applied to such sublimation of everything that is soft and voluptuous and endearing) is more considered than that of the other. Beautiful ladies are here in some profusion, but the first place is for beautiful and guinea-earning gentlemen.

In the old Books of Beauty one could make a choice. There was always one lady supremely longer-necked, more wistful or more simpering than the others. But in this new Book of Beauty one turns the pages only to be more perplexed. The embarrassment of riches is too embarrassing. I have been through the work a score of times and am still wondering on whom my affections and admiration are most firmly fixed.

This new Book of Beauty has a very different title from the old ones. It is called The Pekingese, and is the revised edition for 1914.

How to play the part of Paris where all the competitors have some irresistibility, as all have of either sex! Once I thought that Wee Mo of Westwood was my heart's chiefest delight, "a flame-red little dog with black mask and ear-fringes, profuse coat and featherings, flat wide skull, short flat face, short bowed legs and well-shaped body." But then I turned back to Broadoak Beetle and on to Broadoak Cirawanzi, and Young Beetle, and Nanking Fo, and Ta Fo of Greystones, and Petshé Ah Wei, and Hay Ch'ah of Toddington, and that superb Sultanic creature, King Rudolph of Ruritania, and Champion Howbury Ming, and Su Eh of Newnham, and King Beetle of Minden, and Champion Hu Hi, and Mo Sho, and that rich red dog, Buddha of Burford. And having chosen these I might just as well scratch out their names and write in others, for every male face in this book is a poem.

The ladies, as I have said, are in the minority, for obvious reasons, for these little disdainful distinguished gentlemen figure here as potential fathers, with their fees somewhat indelicately named; for there's a