table-money."

I did it hastily again and made it three minutes twenty-five seconds.

"It is difficult, isn't it?" said Herbert. "I thought, as you used to be mathematical and as I'd promised the girl——"

"Wait a moment," I said, still busy with my envelope. "I forgot the subaltern. Ah, that's right. The answer is a hundred and twenty-five men.... No, that's wrong—I never doubled the half-crown. Er—oh, look here, Herbert, I'm rather busy this morning. I'll send it to you."

"Right," said Herbert. "I know I can depend on you, because you're mathematical." And he opened the door for me.

I had meant to do a very important piece of work that day, but I couldn't get my mind off Herbert's wretched problem. Happening to see Carey at tea-time, I mentioned it to him.

"Ah," said Carey profoundly. "H'm. Have you tried it with an 'x'?"

"Of course."

"Yes, it looks as though it wants a bit of an 'x' somewhere. You stick to it with an 'x' and you ought to do it. Let 'x' be the subaltern—that's the way. I say, I didn't know you were interested in problems."

"Well——"

"Because I've got rather a tricky chess problem here I can't do." He produced his pocket chess-board. "White mates in four moves."

I looked at it carelessly. Black had only left himself with a Pawn and a King, while White had seen to it that he had a Queen and a couple of Knights about. Now, I know very little about chess, but I do understand the theory of chess problems.

"Have you tried letting the Queen be taken by Black's pawn, then sacrificing the Knights, and finally mating him with the King alone?"

"Yes," said Carey.

Then I was baffled. If one can't solve a chess problem by starting off with the most unlikely-looking thing on the board, one can't solve it at all. However, I copied down the position and said I'd glance at it.... At eleven that night I rose from my glance, decided that Herbert's problem was the more immediately pressing, and took it to bed with me.

I was lunching with William next day, and I told him about the subaltern. He dashed at it lightheartedly and made the answer seventeen.

"Seventeen what?" I said.

"Well, whatever we're talking about. I think you'll find it's seventeen all right. But look here, my son, here's a golf problem for you. A. is playing B. At the fifth hole A. falls off the tee into a pond——"

I forget how it went on.

When I got home to dinner, after a hard day with the subaltern, I found a letter from Norah waiting for me.

"I hear from Mr. Carey," she wrote, "that you're keen on problems. Here's one I have cut out of our local paper. Do have a shot at it. The answer ought to be eight miles an hour."

Luckily, however, she forgot to enclose the problem. For by this time, what with Herbert's subaltern, Carey's pawn, and a cistern left me by an uncle who was dining with us that night, I had more than enough to distract me.

And so the business has gone on. The news that I am preparing a collection of interesting and tricky problems for a new Encylopædia has got about among my friends. Everybody who writes to me tells me of a relation of his who has been shearing sheep or rowing against the stream or dealing himself four aces. People who come to tea borrow a box of wooden matches and beg me to remove one match and leave a perfect square. I am asked to do absurd things with pennies....

Meanwhile Herbert has forgotten both the problem and the girl. Three evenings later he shared his Hollandaise sauce with somebody in yellow (as luck would have it) and she changed the subject by wondering if he read Dickens. He is now going manfully through Bleak House—a chapter a night—and when he came to visit me to-day he asked me if I had ever heard of the man.

However I was not angry with him, for I had just made it come to "three cows." It is a cow short, but it is nearer than I have ever been before, and I think I shall leave it at that. Indeed, both the doctor and the nurse say that I had better leave it at that.

A. A. M.

A SEASONABLE BEVERAGE.

THE ANNUAL PROBLEM.

Showing how helpfully the hoardings distinguish between the characteristic features of various localities.

A LONG-FELT WANT.

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty To Motor-Cycles.

POLITICS AT THE ZOO.

Lord Robert Cecil's comparison of the occupants of the Treasury Bench to the monkeys at the Zoo has caused considerable excitement in Regent's Park, and one of Mr. Punch's representatives, assisted by an interpreter, has taken the opportunity to sound some of the principal inmates on the subject.

In the Simian section a certain amount of regret was expressed that Lord Robert had not been more explicit in his comparison. Did he refer to chimpanzees, baboons, gorillas or other species? But when all allowance was made for this lack of precision the general impression was one of satisfaction that a leading politician should have frankly admitted that monkeys possessed qualities which entitled their human possessors to high office and handsome salaries. It was felt that this admission marked a great advance on all previous concessions to the claims of the Simian community, and pointed irresistibly to the ultimate grant—already long overdue—of Monkey Franchise throughout the Empire.

Baboons, it was well known, were already employed as railway porters in Cape Colony, and chimpanzees had of late years appeared with great success at some of the leading music-halls. In view of these facts the further delay of the suffrage could no longer be justified. At present we were confronted with the gross anomaly that a tailor, who was admitted to be only the ninth part of a man, was given a vote, while the monkey, man's ancestor, was denied even the fraction which was all that a tailor deserved.

These views however were not shared by other genera domiciled at the Zoological Gardens. One of the oldest lions observed in a strepitous bass that it was a great relief to him that his race had not been degraded by any such comparisons. He had some respect for hunters, but as for politicians