They have a merry custom in Holland of keeping the railway time twenty minutes ahead of the town time—or is it twenty minutes behind? I never can remember when I’m there, and I am not sure now. The Dutchman himself never knows. “You’ve plenty of time,” he says “But the train goes at ten,” you say; “the station is a mile away, and it is now half-past nine.” “Yes, but that means ten-twenty,” he answers, “you have nearly an hour.” Five minutes later he taps you on the shoulder. “My mistake, it’s twenty to ten. I was thinking it was the other way about.” Another argues with him that his first idea was right. They work it out by scientific methods. Meanwhile you have dived into a cab. The result is always the same: you are either forty minutes too soon, or you have missed the train by twenty minutes. A Dutch platform is always crowded with women explaining volubly to their husbands either that there was not any need to have hurried, or else that the thing would have been to have started half an hour before they did, the man in both cases being, of course, to blame. The men walk up and down and swear. The idea has been suggested that the railway time and the town time should be made to conform. The argument against the idea is that if it were carried out there would be nothing left to put the Dutchman out and worry him. SHOULD WE SAY WHAT WE THINK, OR THINK WHAT WE SAY? A MAD friend of mine will have it that the characteristic of the age is Make-Believe. He argues that all social intercourse is founded on make-believe. A servant enters to say that Mr. and Mrs. Bore are in the drawing-room. “Oh, damn!” says the man. “Hush!” says the woman. “Shut the door, Susan. How often am I to tell you never to leave the door open?” The man creeps upstairs on tiptoe and shuts himself in his study. The woman does things before a looking-glass, waits till she feels she is sufficiently mistress of herself not to show her feelings, and then enters the drawing-room with outstretched hands and the look of one welcoming an angel’s visit. She says how delighted she is to see the Bores—how good it was of them to come. Why did they not bring more Bores with them? Where is naughty Bore junior? Why does he never come to see her now? She will have to be really angry with him. And sweet little Flossie Bore? Too young to pay calls! Nonsense. An “At Home” day is not worth having where all the Bores are not. The Bores, who had hoped that she was out—who have only called because the etiquette book told them that they must call at least four times in the season, explain how they have been trying and trying to come. “This afternoon,” recounts Mrs. Bore, “we were determined to come. ‘John, dear,’ I said this morning, ‘I shall go and see dear Mrs. Bounder this afternoon, no matter what happens.’”