My wife, to whom I have submitted this brain-wave, says that the first job to employ Snaggs on will be calling on the Bank Manager to arrange about the overdraft which neither of us has so far had the courage to moot.  But that, I am afraid, would inspire him with foolish doubts as to the stability of his princely salary.  Perhaps it will be best if, before actually engaging Snaggs, I convert myself into a limited company, “for the purpose of acquiring and enlarging the business and goodwill of the private enterprise known as Percival Trumpington-Jones, Esq.”  A sufficient number of shares will be issued to guarantee Snaggs at least his first year’s screw; that done, the proposition should be practically gilt-edged.  So who’s coming in on the bargain-basement floor?

* * * * *

[Illustration:  =THE PHILANTHROPIST.=

Customer. “WHY, YOU’VE PUT YOUR PRICES UP AGAIN!”

Fishmonger. “WELL, MUM, I ASK YER, ’OW ELSE ARE WE TO FIGHT THE PROFITEER AT ’IS OWN GAME?”]

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

“THE DAISY.”

I imagine that the authors who founded this play on a Hungarian original regarded it as an ambitious piece of work.  If so, they were right in the sense that they have attempted something very much beyond their powers.  In the view of the gentleman who addressed us at the fall of the curtain (I understand that he was one of the authors) it offered magnificent opportunities (I think “magnificent” was the word) for the brilliant gifts of two of the actors.  Certainly it covered a good bit of ground, what with this world and the next; for it started with roundabouts on the Heath, and got as far away as the Judgment Day (Hungarian style?)—­and fourteen years after.

I may have a contemptibly weak stomach for this kind of thing, but I confess that I don’t care much for a representation of the Judgment Day in a melodrama of low life.  Of course low life has just as much right as any other sort of life to be represented in a Judgment Day scene; but it ought to behave itself there and not introduce back-chat.

I should explain that it was a special Suicide Court, and that the object of The Magister, as the Presiding Judge was named in the programme, was to inquire into the record of the delinquent and, if his answers were satisfactory, to allow him to revisit the scenes of his earthly life in order to repair any little omissions that he might have made in the hurry of departure.  Unfortunately the leading case was a bad example of suicide.  It had not been deliberate; he had simply killed himself impromptu in a tight corner to avoid arrest for intended murder.