r nothing can successfully
defeat the wandering of the mind. Continuous concentration is an
impossibility; there is nothing for it but habit--a new habit that shall
be as strong as the old--or the total cessation of all correspondence
and (O that 'twere possible!) all making out of cheques.

Still conquest comes sooner or later, and I have reached that point in
my own struggle. I have at last finally got over the tendency to write
1915.

* * * * *

"As a result of the Labour Conference at Westminster yesterday,
a resolution was sunk on Lake Tanganyika."--_Western Daily
Press._

The best place for it.

* * * * *

A NEW THEATRICAL VENTURE.

A friend of mine has started as manager of his first theatre these
holidays. It may seem to you an unpropitious moment for such a
beginning, but in many ways this special theatre is exceptionally well
guaranteed against failure. The proprietor was kind enough to invite my
presence at his opening performance. As a matter of fact I had myself
put up the money for it.

Naturally I was anxious for the thing to be a success. The theatre
stands on what you could truthfully call a commanding situation at one
end of the schoolroom table. It is an elegant renaissance edifice of
wood and cardboard, with a seating accommodation only limited by the
dimensions of the schoolroom itself, and varying with the age of the
audience. The lighting effects are provided in theory by a row of oil
foot-lamps, so powerful as to be certain, if kindled, to consume the
entire building; in practice, therefore, by a number of candle-ends,
stuck in the wings on their own grease. These not only furnish
illumination, but, when extinguished (as they constantly are by falling
scenery) produce a penetrating aroma which is specially dear to the
managerial nostrils.

The manager, to whom I have already had the pleasure of introducing you,
is Peter. I have been impatiently waiting for the moment of Peter's
first theatre, these nine years. Like marbles or _Treasure Island_, it
is at once a landmark and a milestone in the present-giving career of an
uncle. So I had devoted some considerable care to its selection.

In one respect Peter's theatre reminds me of the old Court in the days
of the VEDRENNE-BARKER repertory. You recall how one used to see the
same people at every performance, a permanent nucleus of spectators that
never varied? The