well-known fluid that we need. If we can't get it, we are neither agreeable nor charming, nor gifted. You ought to tell the public that a bond is being formed between them and us to-day that will be successful only if both of us take part in the play. It's a sad thing in every friendship if one party does all the receiving and none of the giving

TRUFFALDINO (chiming in eagerly and taking the words from her lips as he stands at her left hand) — all the receiving and none of the giving.

COQUETTE (stopping his mouth with her left hand) and none of the giving. Of course, you must not say it to them quite that way. You must say it so that it has an air of its own. Somebody must have put it into proper words, somewhere or other, before this. But if nobody has the written lines let him go ahead and say it as well as he can.

ALL THE ACTORS (together). Let him talk.

TRUFFALDINO. Yes, let me say a couple of words that I have in my heart. ANOTHER. Intelligible, mind you. A THIRD. With feeling. TRUFFALDINO. That's my strong

point.

A FOURTH. Sharp and clear!

A FIFTH. But no pathos about it. TRUFFALDINO. I'll do it! I'll do it! A SIXTH. With quiet restraint. A SEVENTH. With humor. AN EIGHTH. With discreet TRUFFALDINO. With discreet humor! You take the words from my lips.

A THIRD. Don't tell them how serious we are. They would n't like it.

TRUFFALDINO. I know how to begin. A FOURTH. Don't talk about our programme. Don't talk about our plans.

TRUFFALDINO. Oh dear, oh dear!

A FIFTH. Be sure not to talk frivolously about us, because we are very serious in what we are bringing them. TRUFFALDINO. I'll remember.

A SIXTH. Don't neglect anybody. A SEVENTH. Don't show preference for anybody!

THE FIRST. Remember, there are business men and lawyers and doctors out there.

THE SECOND. Weary, melancholy

men.

THE THIRD. A little bit of cheerfulness won't come amiss.

TRUFFALDINO. Is n't that my spe

cialty?

THE FOURTH. But they are Viennese, remember-born Phracians

THE FIFTH. Don't encroach on their

TRUFFALDINO. How can you think it!

WHEN Mr. Plender, aged fifty, became a clerk at Murdock's he told nobody that twenty-five years before he had actually written a novel. And yet this was, and always would be, the central fact in his life, though his pride in it was subtly compounded with shame at his subsequent decline in the world. It was not only that he had failed the best people did that sometimes; it was that he, personally, was a failure. He knew it. At thirty he had been able to deny it; at forty there had been perhaps a shadow of doubt; but at fifty there could be no doubt at all. Luckily it was not hard to preserve an incognito at Murdock's. Nobody there had ever heard of The Wind in the Rushes; indeed, nobody at Murdock's seemed at all interested in books of any kind.

At fifty-five Mr. Plender was still incognito, and still, moreover, a clerk with the same rank and salary. Many of the staff openly ridiculed him, and all, from the office boy upward, treated him as of no account. He did not play golf; he never used slang; he had no obvious pastimes or enthusiasms; in short, he was an old fogy.

And then one morning came young Snaith, the first new member of the staff since Plender himself. Snaith was a shy, bright-faced, eager-eyed, almost girlish-looking youngster in his early twenties, and at the end of his first day, as he passed Mr. Plender in the porch, he said, 'Good night, sir.' Possibly he mistook him for somebody important. But it was the first mark of respect that anybody had shown Mr.

Plender for years, and even the likelihood that it had been due in part to a misapprehension could not take away all its power. Plender warmed to it. That night he dreamed dreams of a deep friendship springing up between himself and young Snaith, a friendship as of a father for a youngest son.

The very next day fate seemed to play into his hands, for during the lunch interval he saw young Snaith studying a typed manuscript, and a casual inquiry elicited the rather shy answer, 'Oh, it's only a story I've written. I try sometimes, you know -to get things in the papers.'

He asked Snaith to tea in his rather dingy furnished rooms. In a conspicuous place on his bookshelves was his own private copy of The Wind in the Rushes. The boy for he thought of him merely as a boy had promised to bring along some of his work, and he intended to go over it with him, making suggestions and giving general literary advice. And then, as a final sensation, he would tell him his own strange secret about the novel that was the one solitary achievement of his life. He waited for that moment as a starved man waits for a meal. Somebody would

respect him at last; somebody would be interested in him-would not think him so ordinary and humdrum and insignificant.

Snaith came, bringing his manuscript, and as soon as Mr. Plender began to look at it he perceived that it was very bad indeed. He was quite frank. 'You've a long way to travel yet, my lad. This' he patted the he patted the manuscript as benevolently as years before a hopeful publisher had patted his 'this shows undoubted promise, but more than that I should not care to affirm. To begin with, you must avoid the cliché. You should never write such phrases as "by dint of an almost superhuman effort" and "fell with a sickening thud." And, in general, I think there is far too much action in your work and not enough psychology. Of course, no doubt I am rather old fashioned.' He paused, smiling, and reached down The Wind in the Rushes. 'Now here's a little thing of my own which I published-oh, quite a number of years ago. I will lend it to you, and perhaps when you read it you will see more clearly what I mean. Especially the chapter entitled "Nymphs and Fauns." Only please don't show or mention it to any of the office people. They have no interest in literature.' He added softly: 'You and I — are in a different world.'

A week later Snaith returned the book with a vague and slightly embarrassed 'Very nice. Awfully good of you to lend it me.'

'Not at all,' murmured Mr. Plender. 'Oh, not at all. I hope it may have helped you in your own work. Had any luck yet?'

'Not yet.'

Mr. Plender smiled. 'Ah well, as I said, you have a long way to travel yet.

Keep at it keep at it. And come to me whenever you want any help.'

But young Snaith did not come to Mr. Plender for help, nor did the friendship prosper as the latter had hoped. And one morning Mr. Plender arrived at the office to find Snaith surrounded by a crowd. He had had a story accepted by the Purple Magazine, and was telling everybody about it. And they, the Philistines, were shouting, 'Splendid!' and 'Congrats, old man!'

'I am very pleased,' Mr. Plender forced himself to say. "Though I am afraid I don't know the-er-the Purple Magazine.' But nobody took any notice of him; perhaps nobody even heard him.

A fortnight later Murdock sent for him. 'Ah, Plender - I shall want you to manage Snaith's work for a short time, till we get somebody else.'

'Why is he leaving?'

'Leavin'? I should jolly well think he's not! I'm givin' him a chance as my private secretary. Enterprisin' deserves young feller encouragement. Had a story in some magazine the other day - damned good, I thought it. Interestin' hobby, and profitable. Everybody ought to have some sort of a hobby. You ought to, Plender.'

Mr. Plender to-day, at the age of sixty, can reflect that his unfavorable opinion of Snaith's literary capacities was quite correct. The story in the Purple Magazine was a mere fluke, and anyhow, as deputy-head of Murdock's, Snaith has not the time, even if he had the desire, for story-writing. When he sees Plender now he would not dream of calling him 'Sir'; he just nods curtly and says, 'Morning, Plender.' His own private opinion also correct — is that Plender is a failure.

WHEN Mr. Rhodes was brooding over his scheme of the scholarships, he used to say, "The game is to get them to knock up against each other qua students. After they have done that for three years at Oxford, they'll never forget it qua individuals.' Accordingly he so arranged what he called his 'game' that each man, bringing with him that side of his head which belonged to the important land of his birth, was put in the way of getting another side to his head by men belonging to other not unimportant countries.

It is an asset toward prosperity, even for those whose lot will be cast alto-, gether in one land, to get full and firsthand information about the men they will meet later. You know the formula better than I. The style of a man's play, plus the normal range of his vices, divided by the square of his work, and multiplied by the coefficient of his nationality, gives not only his potential resistance under breaking-strain, but indicates, within a few points, how far he may be trusted to pull off a losing game. This knowledge can only be acquired in the merciless intimacy of one's early days. After that one has to guess at the worth of one's friends or enemies; but youth which, between ourselves, sometimes knows almost as much about some things as it thinks it always does about everything — can apply its own tests on its own proving grounds, and does not forget the results.

Rhodes and Jameson, for example, did not draw together impersonally

over the abstract idea of Imperial service. They had tried each other out long before, across the poker-tables of the Kimberley Club, beside the deathbeds of friends, and among the sudden and desperate emergencies of life on the diamond fields. So when their work began neither had to waste time in reading up the other's references. They simply fell into step side by side, and there they remained till death parted them.

When the scholarships were first created, one was afraid that Mr. Rhodes's large and even-handed mixing-up of unrelated opposites might infect weaker souls with the middleaged failings of toleration, impartiality, or broad-mindedness. And you know, gentlemen, that when these symptoms break out on a young man it is a sure sign of early death or of a leaning toward practical politics. Fortunately, what one has seen and heard since then proves that one's fears were groundless.

There is a certain night, among several, that I remember, not long after the close of the war, when a man from Melbourne and a man from Montreal set themselves to show a couple of men from the South and the Middle West that the Constitution of the United States was not more than 150 years out of date. At the same time, and in the same diggings, a man from California was explaining to a man from the Cape, with the help of some small hard apples, that no South African fruit was fit to be sold in the same market as the Californian product.