"This is very strange," I said. "Millions? Who are you, then? Not--no, you can't be. You haven't a red beard; you are not in knickerbockers; you don't recall SHAKSPEARE. Nor can you be Mrs. BARCLAY. And yet, of course, I must have heard your name. Might I hear it again, now?" "My name is unknown," he said. "All my work is anonymous." "Not advertisements?" I said. "Not posters'? You didn't write the 'Brown Cat's thanks,' or 'Alas, my poor brother,' or----" "Certainly not," he replied. "My line is literature. Do you ever go to cinemas?" "Now and then," I said, "when it rains, or I have an unexpected hour, or it is too late for a play." "Then you have read me," he said. "I write for cinemas." "There isn't much writing there," I suggested. "Oh, isn't there!" he answered. "Haven't you ever noticed in a cinema how letters are always being brought in on trays?" "Yes, I have." "And then the hero or the villain or the victim opens them and reads them?" "Yes." "And then the audience has to read them?" "Yes; there's no doubt about that." "Well, those are all written by me. I mean, of course, all those that a certain film company requires." "Marvellous," I said. "I not only compose them--and it requires thought and compression, I can tell you--but I copy them out for the photographer too." "Is that why they're always in the same handwriting?" I asked. "Yes, that's it," he said. "It's mine." "Then you can tell me something I have always wanted to know," I said. "I have noticed that when a letter written, say, by the Duke of Pemmican is thrown on the screen it is always signed 'Duke of Pemmican.' Why is that? In real life wouldn't he sign it 'Pemmican'?" "He might," said my companion. "I don't know; but what I do know is that the cinema public expects a duke to call himself a duke; and we pride ourselves on giving them what they want." "If you were making KING GEORGE write a letter," I said, "would he sign himself 'KING GEORGE'?" "Certainly," he replied. "Why not? That's a good idea, anyway. A film with a letter from the KING in it would go. As it is, his only place in a cinema has been to indicate--by the appearance of his portrait on the screen--that the show is over. It isn't fair that he should come to be looked upon as a spoil-sport like that. It has a bad effect on the young. Many thanks for your suggestion. I'll give him a show with a letter." * * * * * A QUESTION OF COURTESY. "Permit me, Sir, to pass you the potatoes." "After you," I inclined. My fellow-passenger helped himself, shrugging his eyebrows. It was a provocative shrug--a shrug I could not leave at that. "You shrug your eyebrows," I challenged. "A thousand pardons," he answered; "but one never escapes it." He courted interrogation. "What is it that one never escapes?" I asked. "The elaborate unselfishness of the age," he replied a little petulantly. "I had two friends who starved to death of it."