So there you have a sample conversation, sketched in outline. You will find it accurate enough. All you have to do is to select for yourself the part you mean to play in it. * * * * * Something to Live For. (_From the Literary Club Smoking-room._) _Cynicus._ I'm waiting till my friends are dead, in order to write My Reminiscences? _Amicus._ Ah, but remember, "_De mortuis nil nisi bonum._" _Cynicus._ Quite so. I shall tell nothing but exceedingly good stories about them. * * * * * SO LIKE HER!--"I can never trust him," said Mrs. R., alluding to a friend of hers, who considered himself well up in SHAKSPEARE, "because I've found out before now that he gargles his quotations." NOTE.--"The Man who Would," _will_ appear next week. No. IV. * * * * * [Illustration: =THE RHODES COLOSSUS= STRIDING FROM CAPE TOWN TO CAIRO.] * * * * * THE RHODES COLOSSUS. ["Mr. RHODES announced that it was his intention, either with the help of his friends or by himself, to continue the telegraph northwards, across the Zambesi, through Nyassaland, and along Lake Tanganyika to Uganda. Nor is this all.... This colossal _Monte Cristo_ means to cross the Soudan ... and to complete the overland telegraph line from Cape Town to Cairo; that is, from England to the whole of her possessions or colonies, or 'spheres of influence' in Africa."--_The Times._] THE World's Seven Wonders are surely outshone! On Marvel World's billows 'twill toss us--'twill toss us, To watch him, Director and Statesman in one, This Seven-League-Booted Colossus--Colossus! Combining in one supernatural blend Plain Commerce and Imagination--gination; O'er Africa striding from dark end to end, To forward black emancipation--cipation. Brobdingnagian Bagman, big Dreamer of Dreams. A Titan of tact and shrewd trader--shrewd trader! A diplomat full of _finesse_ and sharp schemes, With a touch of the pious Crusader--Crusader! A "Dealer" with despots, a "Squarer" of Kings, A jumper of mountain, lake, wilderness, wady, And manager 'cute of such troublesome things As LOBENGULA or the MAHDI--the MAHDI. Well may ABERCORN wonder and FIFE tootle praise, His two thousand hearers raise cheering--raise cheering. Of wild would-be Scuttlers he proves the mad craze, And of Governments prone to small-beering--small-beering. Sullen Boers may prove bores to a man of less tact, A duffer funk wiles Portuguesy--tuguesy; But Dutchmen, black potentates, all sorts, in fact, To RHODES the astute come quite easy--quite easy.