_Wednesday._--Better. Receive a large number of patent medicine circulars--this kind of thing: "Try our Indigestion Waltzes! Warranted to cure. All headache, giddiness and faintness removed at first time of hearing." Here's another: "Dentists superseded! All sufferers from Toothache should attend Herr BOSKOWSKY'S course of Dental Piano Recitals. Worth a guinea a stall." I also learn that the Hirsutine Symphony cures baldness, and that the Pink Bavarian Band may be engaged to play "Slumber-Songs" to sufferers from insomnia. _Thursday._--Am aroused by five barrel-organs performing simultaneously under my next-door neighbour's window. Send a note round suggesting they should be dispersed. Answer "Sorry to cause annoyance, but our youngest child is suffering from chickenpox, and has been ordered street-music every three hours." Go out to buy an air-gun. Later in the day, happening to take up the _Lancet_ at the Club, I find in it a long article on "The treatment of pleurisy by BEETHOVEN'S Fifth Symphony in C Minor." _Friday._--Two seedy-looking men suddenly appear in the drawing-room after dinner to-night. Discover that they are "The Brothers TITTLEBAT" from the Abracadabra Music Hall, and that my wife has engaged them, by her doctor's orders, to sing comic songs every evening for a fortnight, in order to cure the depression of spirits from which she believes herself to be suffering. "The Brothers TITTLEBAT" seem to be suffering themselves from elevation of spirits--gin, to judge by the smell; kick them out, and decide to emigrate to-morrow. * * * * * LA DIVA AT DALY'S. _Gismonda_ is poor stuff. The selection was a mistake. Lucky man SARDOU to have SARA for heroine. Great is SARDOU and SARA is his profit! Splendid as ever, but genius wasted on _Gismonda_. She will be seen at her best in other dramas. Wonderful _artiste!_ Yes, _artiste jusqu'au bout des ongles_, but why give us these real good tips, painted red? If it were in English, SARA might make some joke about her fingers being "reddy" for the assassination of the villain. This explanation does not exist in French. Probably it was the fashion in the time of _Gismonda_. Will any dramatist give SARA an entirely new part in which she will not be compelled to purr, swear (like a cat, not a trooper), scratch, shriek, tumble on settees, clutch curtains, wrestle with cushions, and so forth? Why, on first night, revive old custom of handing up baskets of flowers, per orchestra, to the heroine of the play and the Star of the Night? Why keep the audience waiting so long between each Act? We are not in Paris, and when we have too much "song," or play, we can't get any "supper." * * * * * NOTE (_by our City Man_).--Excellent notion for a hot June--"the _Chili_ Loan." It will be a hot favourite: to be taken up warmly. _Mem._ Invest "cool thousand" in the Chili Loan. * * * * *