"And what do you propose to do now?"

"Oh, I'll give him poison."

"You're sure it will be painless?"

"Quite."

"I wouldn't have him suffer for anything."

"That will be all right."

"Thank you very much. I shall tell my wife he died in his sleep.
Good-bye."

E. V. L.

* * * * *

THE MOUNTAIN AND THE PROPHETS.

My dear Charles,--At Geneva there is, and was long before the arrival
of the League of Nations, a mountain. There are many mountains in
Switzerland, but Geneva's private mountain happens to be in France.
It is called "The Saleve," a nasty name, but not of my choosing. If,
being in Geneva, you want to go up The Saleve (as I personally do not)
you have first to get your passport off the police. The police are
always a little difficult about passports, but, if you mention the
name of The Saleve, you will find them easier. You have next to obtain
the French _visa_ in order to get out of Geneva; then the Swiss _visa_
in order to get back again. Thus provided you have to compete with a
complicated and long-drawn process of trams and frontier controls;
even so you find yourself at the bottom and not at the top of The
Saleve.

Being a busy (or shall we say idle?) man yourself, you will thus
understand the reasons of my policy; if the mountain will not come to
MAHOMED then MAHOMED and the mountain are best kept apart.

The inhabitants of Geneva have long been contriving, intriguing, I
will even say complotting, to get me up The Saleve. My doctor, having
made me thoroughly interested in myself, got on to the subject of
exercise; when my banker passed from the subject of interest on
overdrafts to the advisability of my seeing the great Geneva view, it
was undoubtedly blackmail; and as for my dentist--well, you know what
dentists are and what mean advantages they take. But this one, I
think, over-stepped the limit when he allowed the crown of my tooth to
remind him of the crown of Mont Blanc; paused in fixing the former to
descant on the beauties of the latter; told me that from The Saleve
I should get a better view of the latter than he, where he was, was
getting of the former; asked me almost simultaneously if he was
hurting me and if I had been up The Saleve, and told me that I must go
up it and (which I took to mean "or") that he might have to hurt me.

That was the most critical moment in the whole Battle of The Saleve;
the military critics are unanimous that I should ha