* * * * *

[Illustration:  Officer. “WHAT HAVE YOU GOT THERE?”

Lighterman. “COAL.”

Officer. “I CAN SEE THAT.  WHAT KIND OF COAL?”

Lighterman. “BLACK COAL.”]

* * * * *

MORE INTENSIVE PRODUCTION.

  When first I learned to play the fool
    In various (unaccepted) verses
  There was, I found, one golden rule
    For poets who would line their purses. 
  “If ye,” it ran, “to wealth would mount,
    For silk attire would change your tatters,
  Mere quantity will never count;
    Quality is the thing that matters.”

  Broadly this precept, too, was laid
    On grosser forms of human labour;
  E.g., on Jones’s antique trade,
    Or Brown, the sausage-man, his neighbour;
  Until of late, throughout a land
    Reeling from strikes and “reconstruction,”
  A cry was heard on every hand,
    A clamour for “Increased Production.”

  While “makers,” then, gird on their might
    And merchants buzz like bees in clover;
  When Jones is sawing day and night
    And Brown shows twice his last turnover;
  Shall I not follow where they’ve led
    And, at the PREMIER’S invitation,
  Double my output, Mr. Ed.?—­
    I look for your co-operation.

* * * * *

    “‘Oh, to be in England now that Noel’s near.’

    So, one might adapt one of Kipling’s lines.”—­Indian Paper.

What do they know of BROWNING who only KIPLING know?

* * * * *

    “LADY wishes to travel in exquisite lingerie.”—­Daily Paper.

By all means; but why should she be content to wear an inferior quality when she is stationary?

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

“MR. TODD’S EXPERIMENT.”

A new terror—­or else a new attraction—­has been added to the British Drama.  Mr. WALTER HACKETT has brought the scent of the cinema across the footlights.  When he wants to inform you of certain episodes in the hero’s past career, or let you know what he is doing when he is out of sight, he throws the main stage into darkness and lights up a smaller one on which he gives you as many as six little tabloid plays within the play.

Such a scheme has its obvious conveniences for the playwright, and should greatly simplify the difficulties of stage-craft.  Those introductory statements which are required to explain the opening conditions and need such adroit handling will no longer be necessary.  You just put everybody wise by a series of tableaux parlants.  No longer need the author worry about the best way of conveying to his audience the details of any action that takes place off the stage; he just turns on a playlet and there it is.  Altogether, with a couple of the unities disposed of, he ought to have a much easier time.