aid, "can you tell me where Balmoral is? I've got a load of coal
to take there, and I've been up and down this road in the dark twice, and
can't make out where it is." "It's the fourth house from here to the
right," said my friend, and the coal-heaver thanked him and went away. That
illustrates the practical case for a tax on house names.

But it was not that case which was in Sir Edward's mind. His view is that
we ought to pay for the innocent vanity of living at Chatsworth House
instead of 236, Belinda Avenue. Now if that principle is carried into
effect, I see no end to its operation. I am not sure that Sir Edward
himself would escape. I have often admired his magnificent side-whiskers. I
doubt whether there is a pair of side-whiskers to match them in London.
That he is proud of them goes without saying. Nobody could possibly have
whiskers like them without feeling proud of them. I feel that if I had such
whiskers I should never be away from the looking-glass. And consider the
pleasurable employment they give in idle moments. Satan, it is said, has
mischief still for idle hands to do. But no one with such streamers as Sir
Edward's can ever have idle hands. When you have nothing else to do with
them you stroke your whiskers and purr. Certainly they are worth paying
for. I think they would be dirt cheap at a tax of L1 a side.

And then there are white spats. I don't know how you regard white spats,
but I never see them without feeling that something ought to be done about
it. I daresay the people who wear them are quite nice people, but I think
they ought to suffer in some way for the jolt they give to the
sensibilities of humbler mortals who could no more wear white spats than
they could stand on their head in the middle of Fleet Street. I am aware
that white spats are often only a sort of business advertisement. I have
known careers founded on a pair of white spats. There is Simpkins, for
example. I remember quite well when he first came to the club in white
spats. We all smiled and said it was like Simpkins. He was pushful, meant
to get on, and had set up white spats as a part of his stock-in-trade. We
knew Simpkins, of course, and discounted the white spats; but they made a
great impression on his clients, and he forged ahead from that day. Now he
wears a fur-lined coat, drives his own motor-car, and has a man in livery
to receive you at the door. But the foundation of his fortunes were the
white spats. He understoo