On glancing the other day through the only human column of my newspaper--that headed "Personal"--I was much intrigued by the advertisement of a gentleman who styled himself a "busy commercial magnate," and who announced his urgent need of a "right-hand man." The duties of the post were not particularised, but their importance was made clear by the statement that "any salary within reason" would be paid to a really suitable person. No, I did not think of applying for the post myself; a twelve months' adjutancy to a dyspeptic Colonel had long cured me of the desire to bottle-wash for anyone again, however lavish the remuneration. But, I thought to myself, it must evidently be a profitable notion to employ a right-hand man, or why should this magnate person be so airy on the subject of salary? Would it not then pay me to engage somebody in a similar capacity? Increased production, in spite of Trade Union economics, is emphatically a need of the moment. With a right-hand man at my right hand (when he wasn't at my left) I could, I felt sure, increase my own output enormously; and I began to plan out my daily work under the reconstruction scheme. I will call him "Snaggs"; that will save me the trouble of having to write "my right-hand man" every time I want to refer to him; but when he enters my service such economy of labour will not, of course, be necessary. Snaggs, then, will arrive punctually at nine every morning--no, on second thoughts he will sleep in, in case an inspiration that needs recording arrives after I have gone to bed. (I shrink from estimating how much wealth I have lost through going to sleep on my nocturnal inspirations, which the most thorough search next morning never avails to recapture; but a speaking-tube, with alarm attachment, running into Snaggs's room will alter all that.) His first duty of the day will be to wade through all the newspapers and cut out any paragraphs that may serve as pegs for an article or a set of verses. My own difficulty in this respect has always been that I can never manage to get through more than one paper in a working morning, and not all of that; invariably my attention gets caught by some long and instructive but (for my purposes) hopelessly unsuggestive dissertation on Pedigree Pigs or The Co-operative Movement in Lower Papua, and I consequently overlook many of those inspiring little "stories" that inform us, for example, that a distinguished physician advocates the use of tomato-sauce as a hair-restorer.