HORACE MUN-BROWN TO VERENA RABY MY DEAR AUNT,—You will remember my failure to establish a business-man’s cinema in the City. I may have been discouraged but I was not dismayed, because I am convinced that there is still an enormous field for picture palaces and that the industry will increase rather than decay. I have now hit upon another and more practicable scheme and that is to build picture palaces just inside the great London termini. The idea came to me while waiting at Paddington the other day after just missing my train. The next train was not for two hours, and meanwhile I had nothing to do. The thing to remember is that every day crowds of people are in the same position as mine, while there are countless others with time to kill for different reasons. If a cinema theatre were adjacent, with a continuous performance, it could not but be a very popular boon and should pay handsomely. Even the staff would probably often steal a few minutes there; I don’t mean the station-master, but certainly the porters, and the inhabitants of the neighbourhood would come too. All that is needed is to obtain permission from the various Railway Companies to erect the buildings on their premises and then collect the capital; a mere trifle would be needed, because the site would be either free, or negligibly cheap. If you agree, would you invest, say, £1000 in it? If I do not mention Hazel it is not because I have ceased to love her, but because I have nothing to report. I wish she could be got away from her father, whose cynical influence is bad for her. Detached, she might soon come to see things more romantically and then would be my chance.—I am, yours sincerely, HORACE MUN-BROWN LXX RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY MY DEAR, I am deeply interested in your desire to spend money at once, while living. Personally, I expect you do a great deal more with it than you know, or at any rate than you led me to understand. I happen to be acquainted with your character. The question is, are you strong enough to go into this matter?—for the best almsgiving, I take it, is that which has not been asked, but comes unexpectedly, dropping like gentle dew from a clear sky; and this needs imagination and the willingness to enter into all kinds of investigating trouble. It is in essence the very antithesis of facile cheque-writing; but so irksome, and unlocking so much distress and squalor, that most of us shy at it and reach for the cheque-book again in self-defence. My friend Pagnell, who is all logic, insists that philanthropists are of necessity busy-bodies, and mischievously self-indulgent ones too, and that the broken and the helpless should go to the wall. That, he holds, is Nature’s plan, which meddling man disturbs and frustrates. But the English character is not sufficiently scientifically de-sentimentalized for that.