stroke?" asked Celia with great interest.

"Because once, when Sir Edward Grey was playing the German Ambassador—but it's rather a long story. I'll tell you another time."

"Oh! Well, anyhow, did the German Ambassador got anything for it?"

"No."

"Then I suppose I don't. Bother."

"But you've only got to knock the red in for game."

"Oh!.... There, what's that?"

"That's a miscue. I get one."

"Oh!.... Oh well," she added magnanimously, "I'm glad you've started scoring. It will make it more interesting for you."

There was just room to creep in off the red, leaving it still over the pocket. With Celia's ball nicely over the other pocket there was a chance of my twenty break. "Let's see," I said, "how many do I want?"

"Twenty-nine," replied Celia.

"Ah," I said.... and I crept in.

"That's three to you," I said icily. "Game."

A. A. M.

OUR READY WRITERS.

The astonishing rapidity attained by Mr. Walter Melville in the composition of his plays as revealed in the evidence given in court last week has suggested an appeal to other leading authors for information as to their rate of production. We append the results herewith:—

Mr. Max Pemberton observed that the speed of composition varied with the literary quality of the work produced. Personally he found that by far the most laborious and protracted mental effort was entailed in the writing of Revues. He had calculated that the amount of brain force he had spent on his last masterpiece was fully as large as that expended by Gibbon on his monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In evidence of the strain he added the following interesting statistics. He had worn out thirteen of the costliest gold-nibbed fountain pens; seven expert typists had been so exhausted that they had to undergo a rest-cure; and finally he himself had consumed no fewer than nineteen seven-and-sixpenny bottles of Blunker's Sanguinogen.

Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence, Bart., poohpoohed the notion that the moderns were more rapid producers than their forefathers. As the result of his investigations he had conclusively proved that Bacon was an infinitely more rapid producer than any living author. His time-table worked out as follows. Bacon wrote Chaucer in a little less than three weeks. He completed the Faerie Queene in one sitting, allowing for refreshments, of seventy-four hours. The Plays of Shakspeare occupied him from first to last not more than ten months. Montaigne was dashed off in just a fortnight, while Beaumont and Fletcher, Marlowe, Greene, Webster and Ben Jonson took him exactly 37-1/2 days. Next to Shakspeare's Plays the Divina Commedia was his most protracted effort, costing him nearly four months of unremitting labour. Sir Edwin added in pathetic proof of the degeneracy of the moderns that his own famous pamphlet had taken him twice as long to compose as Chaucer had taken Bacon.

Mr. Hall Caine strongly deprecated the tendency to put a premium on rapid composition, as though there were any special virtue in speed. His own novels, which were written with his heart's blood, represented in their ultimate form a rigorous condensation of materials ten or even fifteen times as bulky. It was in this process of condensation that the self-sacrificing side of true genius was most convincingly shown. But, great as was the strain involved in this painful process, even greater was that imposed on a successful author by the cruel importunity of the interviewer on the eve of publication. Such methods were absolutely alien to his nature, but he had to set against his own convenience the immeasurable disappointment which his refusal would cause his readers. It was one of the most pathetic tragedies of genius that the dictates of an austere reticence were so often set at nought by the impulses of a tender heart.

Sir H. H. Howorth said that the 6,500 columns of The Times which he had filled in the last thirty years had been covered in exactly 3,000 minutes or 500 hours. In his contributions to The Morning Post, where he was accorded a larger type, he had attained a slightly greater velocity, almost equalling that of Lope de Vega, the most prolific writer on record. On the other hand, in his History of the Mongols he had adopted a rate of progress more in keeping with the leisurely habits of the race whose records he was collating. He added the interesting fact that, in spite of the saying nomen omen, both Dean Swift and Archdeacon Hare were slow composers.

THE SECRET OF OUR COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY.

Clerk (to applicant for post of office-boy). "The guvnor's out. Call to-morrow at nine.

Applicant. "Oh, I say! Can't you make it later? I have my breakfast at nine."

"Coroners' juries have frequently placed on record their disapproval of amateur doctring."

Manchester Guardian.

Which, in the opinion of Mrs. Gamp, they ought to mind their own business and not interfere with matters connected with religion.

The Picture of a Boxer As Published Fifty Years Ago.

And the picture of a boxer as published to-day.

MANES À LA MODE.

(A vision suggested by the inspiriting rumour that green hair is about to become fashionable.)