tea-tasters and the men who stand on Cornish cliffs and shout when they see the pilchard shoals come in, we still give a certain amount of credit to mere brain-work as well.

There is, however, a poisonous idea prevalent, especially amongst the women of this country, that a fellow is not working with his brain unless he is walking rapidly up and down the room with wrinkles on his forehead, or sitting on a hard chair at a table with a file of papers in front of him. But there is no rule of this sort about the birth of great and beautiful ideas in the human brain. It is all a matter of individual taste and habit. I know a man, a poet, who thinks best on the Underground Railway, and that is the reason why he said the other day, "Give me to gaze once more on the blue hills," to the girl in the booking-office, when what he really wanted was a ticket (of a light heliotrope colour) to St. James's Park. Lord Byron, on the other hand, composed a sorrowful ditty on the decadence of the Isles of Greece whilst shaving; but the invention of the safety-razor and the energetic action of M. Venizelos will most likely render it unnecessary for anyone to repeat such a performance. As for the people who have a sudden bright idea whilst they are dressing for dinner, they may be dismissed at once, for they nearly always go to bed by mistake and, when they wake up again extremely hungry, they have forgotten what it was.

Most experts are really agreed that a recumbent or semi-recumbent position is the best for creative thought, and another friend of mine, also a maker of verses, has patented the very ingenious device of a pair of stirrups just under the mantelshelf, so that, when he sits back in his armchair, he can manage his Pegasus without having his feet continually slipping off the marble surface into the fender.

Much may be said too for a seat in a first-class railway carriage, when you have the compartment all to yourself and the train is going at sixty miles an hour or more. But England is hardly spacious enough for a really sustained inspiration; and the result of being turned out suddenly at Thurso, N.B., or Penzance is that some opening flower of the human intellect fails to achieve its perfect bloom, and as likely as not your golf clubs are left in the rack.

There is also, of course, an influential school which believes strongly in the early morning tea hour, and people who ought to know tell me that Mr. Winston Churchill plans new uniforms for the Guards as well as the campaign in Mesopotamia with pink pyjamas on, and that the Prime Minister can never be persuaded to get up for breakfast until he has hit on a few of those striking repartees which are subsequently translated by his posse of interpreters into Russian, Italian, Bohemian and Erse.

For my part, however, I swear by a Chesterfield sofa, a large one, on which you can lie at full length, as I am lying now; the most comfortable thing there is on earth, I think, except perhaps a truss of hay, when one has been riding for about six consecutive hours in an army saddle. But there are disadvantages even about a Chesterfield sofa. It is, to begin with, in the drawing-room and in the drawing-room one is not so entirely immune from the trivial incidents of everyday life as I like to be when I am having brain-waves. Doors are opened and this creates a draught, and it is not the slightest use attempting a real work of imagination when people will come in and ask if I am lying on The Literary Supplement of The Times (as if it were likely), or the anti-aircraft gun that the children were playing with after lunch. For this reason I have had to invent an even better thing than the ordinary Chesterfield sofa, and since it will be, when made, the noblest piece of scientific upholstery in the world I will ask the printer to write the next sentence in italics, please.

It is a Chesterfield sofa enclosed on all four sides. Thank you.

The marvels of this receptacle for human thought will dawn upon the reader by slow degrees. Try to imagine yourself ensconced there, having climbed up by the short flight of steps which will be attached to it, enisled and remote amidst the surging traffic that sweeps through a drawing-room. Instead of making a rapid bolt to escape from callers and probably meeting them full tilt in the hall, you simply stay on, thinking. You have nothing to fear from them, unless they are so inquisitive and ill-mannered as to come and peep over the edge. With plenty of tobacco, a writing tablet and a fountain-pen, you can stare at the anaglypta ceiling and dream noble thoughts and put them down when you like without interruption. On sunny days the apparatus can be wheeled on to the balcony, where the sapphire sky will be exchanged for the anaglypta ceiling; and for winter use a metal base will be supplied, under which you can place either an oil-stove or an electric radiator.

I should like to see this four-sided Chesterfield in offices also. The master-strokes of commercial and administrative skill would be much more masterly with most people if they did not have to proceed from a hard office chair. You can easily dictate to a typist from the interior of a Chesterfield, and, though I know that business men and Government officials are often subjected to deputations, during which they have to look their persecutors in the face, this difficulty could be overcome by means of a sliding panel, through which the face of the recumbent administrator could be poked when necessary, wearing the proper expression of shrewdness, terror, conciliation or rage. I should like Sir Eric Geddes to have one of my four-sided Chesterfields.

With his usual sagacity the reader will probably remark here that the four-sided Chesterfield can be procured ready-made at any moment by turning the usual article round and pushing it up against the wall. This point has not escaped notice, my friend. But you can hardly imagine the objections that will be urged by the female members of your household against adopting such a course in the drawing-room. They will assert, amongst other things, that Mrs. Ponsonby-Smith is on the point of arriving and that she will think you've done it on purpose.

I shall have the upholsterer in to-morrow.

Evoe.

Gladys. "Have you any interesting cases coming on, Sir Charles?"

Eminent K.C. "We have a very intricate and technical case coming on—most interesting. It turns on the question whether a certain subterranean conduit should be classified as a drain or a sewer."

Gladys. "Oh, but why not ask a plumber?"

DEDICATIONS.

Mr. Compton Mackenzie has found it necessary to state publicly in a dedication that his books have not been written by his sister.

The following extracts are taken from possible future dedications by various authors:—

Mr. H.G. Wells to the Bishop of London.

As I have seen it stated in various journals that you are the author of my book, The Soul of a Bishop, I hereby take the opportunity of informing your Lordship most definitely and emphatically that you are not. That book and also The Passionate Friends were written without any assistance from the episcopal bench. To avoid future misunderstanding I may say that all my books are written by myself. If at any time it is suggested that any publication of your Lordship has been written by me, I shall be glad if you will immediately issue a contradiction.