of Morecambe Bay. The propeller was broken, but the occupants, a lady and a gentleman, escaped with a shaking."—Daily Paper.

The real shock came when they found out where they were.

When a fellow gets his—	photo taken for the papers—
I think it's rotten bad form—	on the part of another fellow—
to spoil the picture by intruding a ball—	at the crucial moment.

THE PRESS PHOTOGRAPH.

THE HANDY MAN.

The men I most admire at the present time, though I take care not to tell them so to their faces, are the men who can do everything. By this I don't mean people of huge intellectual attainments, like Cabinet Ministers, or tremendous physical powers, like Tarzan of the Apes. It must be very nice to be able to have a heart-to-heart talk with Krassin or to write articles for the Sunday picture-papers, and very nice also to swing rapidly through the tree-tops, say, in Eaton Square; but none of these gifts is much help when the door-handle comes off. I hate that sort of thing to happen in a house.

In the Victorian age, of course, which was one of specialisation based upon peace and plenty, one simply sent for a door-handle replacer and he put it right. But nowadays the Door-handle Replacers' Union is probably affiliated to an amalgamation which is discussing sympathetic action with somebody who is striking, so nothing is done. This means that for weeks and weeks, whenever one tries to go out of the room, there is a loud crash like a 9.2 on the further side and a large blunt dagger clutched melodramatically in the right hand, and nobody to murder with it.

The man who can do everything is the kind of man who can mend a thing like a broken door-handle as soon as look at it. He always knows which of the funny things you push or pull on any kind of machine to make it go or stop, and what is wrong with the cistern and the drawing-room clock.

Such a man came into my house the other day. I call it my house, but it really seems to belong to a number of large people who walk in and out and shift packing-cases and splash paint and tramp heavily into the bathroom about 8.30 a.m. when I am trying to get off to sleep. They have also dug a large moat right through the lawn and the garden-path, which rather spoils the appearance of these places, though it is nice to be able to pull up the drawbridge at night and feel that one is safe from burglars. Anyhow, whether it is my house or theirs, the fact remains that the electric-bells were wrong. The man of whom I am speaking lives next-door, and he came in and pointed this out. "It is not much use having electric-bells," he said, "that don't ring."

I might have argued this point. I might have said that to press the button of a bell that does not ring gives one time to reflect on whether one really wants the thing one rang for, and thereafter on the whole vanity of human wishes, and so inculcates patience and self-discipline. It is quite possible that an Eastern yogi might spend many years of beneficial calm pressing the buttons of bells that do not ring. But I replied rather weakly, "No, I suppose not."

"I'll soon put that right for you," he said cheerily, and about five minutes later he asked me to press one of the buttons, and there was a loud tinkling noise. It seemed a pity that at the moment when the bell did happen to ring there should be nobody to come and answer it.

"Whatever did you do to them?" I asked.

"It only needed a little water," he said, and I had hard work to suppress my admiration. The very morning before, feeling that I ought to take a hand in all this practical work that was going on about the place, I had filled a large watering-can that I found lying about and wetted some things which someone had stuck into the garden. I have a kind of idea that they were carrots, but they may have been maiden-hair ferns. Somehow it had never occurred to me for a moment to go and water the electric bells.

Almost immediately afterwards this man discovered that all the knives in the kitchen were blunt and went and fetched some kind of private grindstone and sharpened them, and then told me that the apple-trees ought to be grease-banded, which I thought was a thing one only did to engines. And, when he had brought a hammer and some nails and put together a large bookcase which had collapsed as soon as The Outline of History was put on to it (I should like to know whether Canon Barnes can explain that), I was obliged to ask him to stop, in case the tramping men should see him and strike immediately for fear of the dilution of labour.

But what impressed me most was the part he took next day in the Railway Carriage Conference, which curiously enough was on the subject of strikes. There were several people in the carriage, and they were talking about what they had done during the railway strike last year, and what they would do if such a thing happened again. I said I should like to be a station-master if possible, because they had top-hats and grew such beautiful flowers. Only four or five trains seem to stop at our station during the day, and if there was a strike I suppose the number would be reduced to one or two. And I thought it would be rather nice to spend the day wearing a top-hat and watering the nasturtiums in the little rock-gardens behind the platform. Watering, I said, was quite easy when once one got into the swing of it.

But the man who could do everything seemed to know everything too, and he told me that station-masters were much too noble to strike. There were two kinds of station-masters, he said, both wearing top-hats, but one kind with full morning-dress underneath it and the other with uniform. But neither kind struck.

Slightly nettled at his superior knowledge, I asked him, "What did you do during the Great Strike?"

"Oh, I had rather fun," he said; "I controlled the signals at London Bridge."

If all the truth were known I expect that he is quite ready for Mr. Smillie's strike; that he has a handy little pick in his bedroom and knows of rather a jolly little coal-mine close by.

Evoe.