My friends, topsy-turveydom is not so easy as it looks. The trouble is not in inverting, but in finding _what to invert_. Our language is full of ancient saws, but it takes wit to discover which to turn upside down. Anybody can stand anything on its head, but it is only the real humourist who knows which thing can stand on its head without falling or looking foolish. 'T is the same in stage dialogue. Many a man of moderate wit can find a repartee when the joke is unconsciously led up to by another speaker. It is the preparation for the joke that is the dramatist's difficulty. To borrow a term from the Greek grammars, the protasis of the repartee is more troublesome than the apodosis. The puzzle is, therefore, find the protasis. When Barry Pain says that sometimes the glowing fire in the grate stares at you from behind its bars, as if it could read pictures in you, you cannot help laughing. If he had given you the protasis, "You gaze into the fire as if you could read pictures in it," even you could have invented the inversion. Topsy-turveydom is, I repeat, no laughing matter. It is an art--and must be studied. When Besant's School of Literature is founded, there will be EXERCISES IN TOPSY-TURVEYDOM 1. Invert the following commonplaces humorously: Honesty is the best policy. The cup that cheers but not inebriates. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Like a child in its mother's arms. (_Not so easy, you see!_) 2. Invert the following _motifs_ humorously: (_a_) A parted husband and wife reconciled by their little child. (Stock Poetry.) (_b_) A patient marrying his nurse on recovery. (Stock Story.) (_c_) A mother-in-law who comes to stay six months. (The Old Humour.) Inversion may be applied, you see, both to ideas and to phrases. Let me contribute a specimen of either sort to the literary primer of the future: THE ECONOMY OF SMOKING