"Browning's _Sordello_ was literature--but not actable drama."--_Daily Chronicle._ The same remark applies to _Paradise Lost_. * * * * * [Illustration: _Charwoman._ "PLEASE, MUM, I AIN'T COMING TO WORK HERE NO MORE." _Mistress._ "INDEED. HOW IS THAT?" _Charwoman._ "WELL, MY MAN'S EARNING SO MUCH NOW THAT THERE'S PLENTY COMING IN. LAST WEEK WE WAS OBLIGED TO PUT SOME IN THE SAVINGS-BANK, AND I'M AFRAID WE SHALL HAVE TO AGAIN _THIS_."] * * * * * THOUGHTS ON NEWSPAPERS. I swear that this article is not written in the interests of the newspaper trade. If it bears fruit the newspaper trade will score, but that I cannot help. It is written in the larger interests of humanity and the sweeter life. The situation briefly is this. One paper is not enough for any house, and some houses or families require many. In the house in which I write, situate in a foreign country, there are many exiles from England and only one paper, which arrives on the fourth day after publication (thus making Wednesday a terrible blank), and sometimes does not complete the round of readers until to-morrow. The result is that a bad spirit prevails. Normally open and candid persons are found concealing the paper against a later and freer hour; terminological inexactitude is even resorted to in order to cover such jackdaw-hoardings; glances become covetous and suspicious. All this could be obviated. I remember hearing of a distinguished and original and masterful lady (SARGENT has painted her) in the great days, or rather the high-spirited days, of _The Pall Mall Gazette_--when verse was called Occ, and it was more important that a leading article should have a comic caption than internal sagacity, and six different Autolyci vended their wares every week--who had fifteen copies of the paper delivered at her house every afternoon, and fifteen copies of _The Times_ every morning, so that each one of her family or guests might have a private reading; and she was right. A newspaper should be as personal as a toothbrush or a pipe, otherwise how can we tear a paragraph out of it if we want to?--as my friend, Mr. Blank, the historian, always does, for that great sociological essay on which he is engaged, entitled _The Limit_. But the idea of having enough papers for all has gained no ground. Even clubs don't have enough. And as for dentists----! Givers of theatre parties have been divided into those who buy a programme for each guest and those who buy one programme for all; and programmes, for some occult reason which seems to satisfy the British ass, cost sixpence each. Yet the enlightened hosts of the first group will cheerfully pack their houses with week-enders and supply but one _Observer_ for the lot. Why?