By the time I have finished breakfast, I reckon, Snaggs will have found me subjects for at least a dozen effusions, neatly arranged with a few skeleton suggestions for the treatment of each. I shall first decide which are to be handled in prose and which in verse, and in the case of the latter shall jot down a few words and phrases that will obviously have to be dragged in as line-endings. Then I shall put Snaggs on to the purely mechanical drudgery of finding all the possible rhymes to these words (_e.g._, fascinate, assassinate, pro-Krassinate--you know the sort of thing that's called for), and by the time he has catalogued them all I shall have dashed off most of the prose articles, which Snaggs will then proceed to type while I am engaged in the comparatively simple task of piecing together the verse jigsaws. In this way I should easily be able to earn an ordinary week's takings in a morning. The next task will be the placing of this material, and that is how Snaggs's afternoons will be spent. I have always had an unnecessarily tender feeling for editors, and often, after laboriously giving birth to an article, have concealed it in a drawer rather than run the risk of boring anyone with its perusal. Snaggs, however, will be fashioned of more pachydermatous material and will daily make himself such a nuisance that they'll give him an order, and possibly a long contract, to get rid of him. By a proper system of book-keeping he will also save me from the occasional blunder of sending the same article to the same paper twice. My wife, to whom I have submitted this brain-wave, says that the first job to employ Snaggs on will be calling on the Bank Manager to arrange about the overdraft which neither of us has so far had the courage to moot. But that, I am afraid, would inspire him with foolish doubts as to the stability of his princely salary. Perhaps it will be best if, before actually engaging Snaggs, I convert myself into a limited company, "for the purpose of acquiring and enlarging the business and goodwill of the private enterprise known as Percival Trumpington-Jones, Esq." A sufficient number of shares will be issued to guarantee Snaggs at least his first year's screw; that done, the proposition should be practically gilt-edged. So who's coming in on the bargain-basement floor? * * * * * [Illustration: =THE PHILANTHROPIST.= _Customer._ "WHY, YOU'VE PUT YOUR PRICES UP AGAIN!" _Fishmonger._ "WELL, MUM, I ASK YER, 'OW ELSE ARE WE TO FIGHT THE PROFITEER AT 'IS OWN GAME?"] * * * * * AT THE PLAY. "THE DAISY."