Whenever we spend a week in London we never seem to find time for the things we really want to do. After dinner, on our last night at home, I say to Angela, "Let's see—have we any engagements this trip?"

And Angela answers, "Don't you remember? We're dining with the Hewetsons on Thursday, and on Saturday the Etheridges are taking us to a symphony concert. Then there's your sister."

"Oh, ring her up, and suggest we come to dinner on Sunday. We don't want to waste a proper night on Nellie."

"All right. That leaves us four evenings for ourselves. I suppose you want to see the Quartermasters' Exhibition at Olympia?"

"What's that?"

"I can't think which part of the newspapers you read. Why, they've had columns and columns about it."

"Ah, that's how I missed it. I only look at the 'late news.' It seems a waste of time to read the rest."

"Well, it's an exhibition showing the wonderful work done by Quartermasters in the War. There are Quartermasters checking stores——"

"Are they shown wondering where they ought to stand on a battalion parade?"

"I don't know about that; but we see them indenting for coal——"

"And regretting their inability to issue same?"

"Very likely. Anyhow, everything is arranged practically under the actual conditions. The exhibition started in an Army hut in St. James's Park, but proved such a success it had to be moved to Olympia. Why, Mr. Churchill was there one day this week."

"Did he make a speech?"

"He either made a speech or left by a side-door. I can't remember now, but I know he was there."

"Why can't we go in the afternoon?"

"They say it's better at night, because the whole place is lit up by hurricane lanterns and looks like fairyland."

"Oh, very well. That leaves us three evenings. We——"

"There's this French season at the Central. The papers say that no one who appreciates good acting can afford to miss that. It's packed, I believe.... Besides, one finds one's French comes back very easily. By the end of the evening I can generally follow most of what they say."

"H'm. We shan't be able to see Robey and Berry and Graves and Leslie Henson and Delysia in two nights."

"No-o.... Besides, everybody says one ought to see this Japanese man in Romeo and Juliet. I hear the way he swarms up the creeper in the balcony scene is quite too wonderful. They made him do it four times the first night."

Thus we are left with six evenings of duty and one of enjoyment, unless Angela happens to hear that there is a 'cellist from Spitzbergen or a Bolshevik soprano whom it is social death not to be able to discuss. In that case we get no fun at all.

The Hewetsons, who live in London and can enjoy all these opportunities for improvement and still have time for Mr. Robey and the rest, think me a terrible Philistine. But, as I pointed out to Hewetson, he suffers just as acutely when he has a holiday and goes to Paris. Hewetson holds that there is only one theatre in Paris, the VariÉtÉs. But by the time he has accompanied Mrs. H. to the FranÇais, the OpÉra, the OpÉra Comique and the OdÉon, to say nothing of the ThÉÂtre des Arts, he is due back at the office. When I explained this to him, his whole attitude changed at once, and he implored me to accept his subscription for shares in my company. But his heart-rending account of his last visit to Paris, before the War, when he and Mrs. H. spent two days hunting round the Louvre (MusÉe) under the impression that the Rodins were kept there, suggested a wider scope for my schemes, and it seemed to me that the only fair way of acknowledging this was to make Hewetson a director.

And now I must tell you about my company, for, although we are in danger of becoming over-capitalised, there are still one or two shares we are willing to sacrifice, practically at par. The company is known as High-brows, Ltd., and is "designed to meet the requirements" of the countless thousands who detect a familiar note in the conversation with Angela just recorded. The idea is simple and, like all simple ideas, great. We buy a house in each of the chief capitals of the civilised world, and to this house the visitor hurries as soon as he has left his luggage at the hotel. Each house will be arranged in the same manner, so that no knowledge of the language of the country is required to enable the stranger to find his way about.

The ground floor will consist of one large hall or room, combining the functions of waiting-room and Fine Art Gallery. Reproductions of the principal pictures and statues of the national museums will occupy two walls and the centre carpet, the remaining walls being hung with the more astonishing examples of contemporary painters. (We are not anticipating any inquiries for contemporary sculpture). A minimum of ten minutes is allowed for this room. When your turn arrives you mount to the first floor, which you find divided into two parts. In each of these a cinematograph is installed, one "featuring" prominent artists in the standard dramas of the particular country—works like Le Cid, Macbeth, Faust, or Peer Gynt; while the other runs through the more discussed scenes of any current entertainment which conceivably one "ought to see."

The first of these programmes is designed primarily for foreigners, and is meant to save them the fatigue of a visit to national or subsidised theatres, where these exist. The second is intended to meet the requirements of natives. Each bill will last an hour, and, though clients are entitled to see both performances, full-time attendance at either carries with it the right to proceed to the next floor. Here again are two more rooms. In the first of these a gramophone renders in turn the leading vocalists and instrumentalists (serious) of the country. (Say half-an-hour.) So far you will have been put to a minimum expenditure of one hour and forty minutes, and, as only five minutes is allowed for the last room, the time total cannot be considered excessive.

In this last room is nothing but a row of desks. You wait your turn before one of these; then you hand in your name and receive a pass. On this is printed a certificate that you, the above-mentioned, are acquainted with the masterpieces tabulated overleaf. Thus in less than two hours (inclusive of possible delay in the waiting-room) you are free to spend your holiday exactly as you choose. It is hoped that in time these certificates may come to be accepted as carrying complete immunity, for at least a month, from every form of intellectual treat.

Hewetson wanted the certificates to be issued in the waiting-room. He said it would save time. But I decided that, if the prestige of the institutions and their certificates is to be kept up, unscrupulous people must have no chance of obtaining a pass and slipping away without going up-stairs. Indeed, I am adding an elaborate system of checks, by which it will become impossible to reach the Discharge Bureau without spending the requisite time in each room. The first room is the danger. In the crush people might escape to the cinemas before their ten minutes is up. My idea is to hand to each entrant a lump of High-brow stickjaw, guaranteed not to dissolve in less than the stipulated period, and to station a lynx-eyed dentist at the foot of the stairs....

Hewetson in his simple-minded way also wanted the company to be called the Holiday-makers' Enjoyment League, or the Society of Art-Dodgers, or some such name. He even thought the houses should be painted in bright attractive colours. I pointed out to him that they should be uninviting and dull in appearance, and that a uniform sobriety, a suggestion of yearning and uplift, in every feature of the company's appeal would not only allow thousands of hypocrites, like Angela, to seek relief at our doors, but would actually confer on people like Hewetson and me a stamp of that same intellectual passion from whose manifestations we are engaged in escaping.

"SWANSEA AND DISTRICT RUGBY LEAGUE.

Cup Finals.

Admission: 1s.; Grand Stand, 1s. extra.

(Including Tax).

All Seats Free.No Collection.

Please bring your Bible for reference."

Welsh Paper.

The Welsh may not, like the English, take their pleasures sadly, but are evidently expected to take them seriously.

"Partnership.—Ex-Regular officer, owing hotel at fashionable spa, desires to meet lady or gentleman, with capital."—Daily Paper.

Before replying we should like to know the amount of the bill he owes.

From a short story:—

"Unconscious of the waiter at her elbow with pad and pencil poised for her order, unconscious also of her husband, now her happy tÊte-À-tÊte, she spoke aloud: 'One never knows!'"—Monthly Magazine.

How they must have enjoyed their cosy vis-À-vis.