“Few centenarians can ever have contributed a more exhilarating addition to an evening’s excitement. “Dr. HOOPER, late Master of Trinity and ex-Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, expressed his gratification that his _alma mater_ was indissolubly associated with the great undertaking which they were once more met to celebrate in convivial conclave. Cambridge was famous for its ‘Backs,’ and it had put its back into the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. He hoped that he might be spared to attend their three hundredth meeting, with Sir HUGH CHISHOLM as Autocrat of the Dinner-Table.” FOOTNOTES: [8] Now Mrs. W. L. Courtney. CHAPTER XXV ON JOTTINGS Do you ever jot? If not, pray allow me to introduce you to one of the least expensive and most repaying domestic hobbies. I am myself a most inveterate jotter, both by pen and brush, for I have cases full of water-colour sketches, and bundles of maps, scraps, photos, and oddments. Plenty of entertainment for future years can be laid up in this way. Good stories; real plots too strange for fiction; bon-mots; impressions of scenery; plays; programmes; events; menus; anything that pleases one’s fancy is fish for the jotting net. In some receptacle—whether drawer, despatch-box, or tin case—fling in your jottings, pencilled in haste while fresh. I have cupboards of notes on Mexico, Iceland, Finland, Lapland, Sicily, Russia, Italy, Morocco, America, Canada—pamphlets, prints, statistics, and other heterogeneous matter. And to all would-be journalists and aspiring book-writers let me also add: jot down your happy thoughts, smaller inspirations, appreciated quotations, for all may be useful some day. To begin with, here is a “true fact”—as silly persons will sometimes declare—concerning a banker. By way of title to my little tale, I will call it: “THE MILLIONAIRE’S FOUR POUNDS.” He was lunching with me on his return from Egypt, this quiet, unassuming head of a great banking firm. “What have you written this year?” I asked. “Twenty-two stanzas on Egypt, a land of ancient tombs and modern worries. They appeared, and I actually got four pounds for them.” The four pounds delighted him. That he spent more than four thousand pounds in Egypt counted for naught, he had _earned_ four pounds. “Rather funny, I was motoring in Scotland lately, and I called on the Editor,” continued my guest. “He was charming. We talked on many subjects, and then I said, ‘You don’t pay your contributors very highly, do you?’ “‘Yes, oh yes, we do.’ “‘You only paid me four pounds for twenty-two stanzas the other day.’ “‘Ah, well, you see, that was poetry, and no one reads poetry!’” He told me the joke with a merry little chuckle on his grave face, and his blue eyes twinkled. * * * * *