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 Violets_, both versions of Feuillet's drama _Montjoie_, and Mr Arthur Jones's clever piece _A Rogue's Comedy_, and _Business is Business_, the adaptation of _Les Affaires sont les Affaires_. Moreover, there was a melodrama given at the Opéra Comique which, despite the care of the Censor, contained caricatures of several notorious living financiers. They were financiers touching whom one may record the story, perhaps unpublished, of an American who asserted vaingloriously that we have no great financiers in England such as are to be found in the United States, and on being answered that we have, and thereupon inquiring scornfully where they could be found, received the curt reply, "In gaol." Unfortunately, the finances of the Opéra Comique production were almost as unsubstantial as the finance in the other plays, and it did not last long. Mr Cecil Raleigh also, in some of the Drury Lane dramas which used to give us vast entertainment, handled company matters in a broad, generous, comic fashion which baffled criticism.