Take my own case. I have written a _lever du rideau_ in the shape of a farce, a light thing that plays only an hour and three-quarters, and though I have submitted it to seventeen managers in succession, I have never been able to induce one of them to try it even at a matinée. I have also written a pantomime and left it, endorsed with my title at the stage-door of a leading Metropolitan Theatre, from which however, notwithstanding that I have made repeated applications for it in person, I have never yet been able to succeed in getting it returned. But journalism is, I am aware, distinct from dramatic literature, and this inspires me with confidence. Indeed I shall lose no time in communicating with Mr. DAVID ANDERSON and placing my four sons unreservedly in his hands. Even if they did not as "trained journalists" succeed in realising that brilliant level of £1000 per annum, with which his advertisement so alluringly concludes, they might possibly touch the figure half-way, and draw their modest five hundred a-piece. Need I say, my dear Mr. Punch, if they did, how they would restore the fortunes of a falling house, and in so doing, gladden the heart of yours hopefully, A DUKE IN DIFFICULTIES. * * * * * THE TOO-COMPLETE LETTER-WRITER.--M. WILSON. * * * * * THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE. (_A Cosmos Story._) CHAPTER I. Mr NOMAN LUCKIER, the eminent astronomer, was walking in his garden. Suddenly he was staggered by a sharp blow on the head. Something fell at his feet. It was not his head. He picked it up. It was a meteoric stone. This set him thinking. "Here," said he, as he rubbed his newly-acquired phrenological development with one hand and held the meteoric stone in the other, "is a solid, ponderable body, which I can handle, examine, and analyse, and it comes to me," continued the eminent scientist, extending his arms and looking round him, then directing his gaze upwards, his eye dilating with the grandeur of the discovery,--"it comes to me direct from the Cosmos!" CHAPTER II. There was a chuckle from behind the neighbouring hedge, and, as the Philosopher returned to his sanctum to write a paper on the "Spectra of Meteorites," a small boy stepped cautiously out into the road, and hurried down the lane. "Ooray!" muttered the small boy to himself; "the old gent don't know my name. What did he say about 'Crismas'?" And he vanished into space. CHAPTER III. The Philosopher, with aching head, sat down to write, and penned these words,-- "_Cosmical space is filled with meteorites of all sizes, flying about with immense velocities in all directions._" "Good Heavens! or, rather, Bad Heavens!" exclaimed a simple-minded visitor, to whom he read this statement, "why, 'Cosmical space' must be uncommonly like a proclaimed district in Ireland, or Trafalgar Square during a Socialist riot."