entioned to the persons in the play everything
is understood--by them. All assume that the property is multiplied in
value by its existence. Joe is to be offered L5000 to bring about the
sale. A simple practical person, such as a dramatic critic, is inclined
to ask whether Willie is not buying a pig in a poke. He can hardly have
had shafts sunk surreptitiously on the Cardew estates in order to
ascertain whether the coal-mines would be a curse or a blessing to the
owner; and if the property adjoined valuable collieries, the Cardews
would have made some investigation.

For it by no means follows that a coal-mine is a source of wealth, since
the "black diamonds," concerning our available quantity of which
Professor Jevons scared our fathers when some of us were agreeably
younger, may be indifferent in quality or lie with such faults and in a
manner so inconvenient that it can only be worked at a ruinous cost.
Nevertheless, whenever the magic word "coal" is whispered the characters
are thrilled, like housewives reminded by their husband that they have
forgotten to order it at the "lowest summer prices." No doubt the author
will say that after all coal is coal, and may be reminded of the
plaintive retort by the little girl in _Punch_ that "mother said the
last lot was nearly all slates." Willie talks of making a million out of
the purchase; he is fortified in his views by the fact that the Great
Central Railway is going to run through part of the property. Writers of
fiction are apt to believe that in these times land-owners receive on
compulsory purchase the extravagant sums that used to be awarded in past
days and by their magnitude have hampered the railway companies and the
general public ever since; juries or arbitrators have come to their
senses, and compensation no longer spells unmerited fortune, except by
the reaping of a large crop of "unearned increment." And now there are
the new taxes.

It may be suggested that we do not demand exact finance or correct law
in our fiction nowadays. A few, indeed, are meticulous in the matter,
but it is generally assumed that the public would be bored by correct
details. No one has ventured to dramatize Laurence Oliphant's
brilliantly humorous "Autobiography of a Joint Stock Company"--apologies
if by slip of memory the title is given at all incorrectly.
Occasionally, it is true, our plays treat financial matters with some
particularity; one may cite _Mammon_ and _A Bunch of Viole