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THE HEAVILY INSURED.

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

IN reference to M. PADEREWSKI's distressing illness, it is My Baronite turns with expectation of pleasure to interesting to recall that, like all other great musical per- anything signed with the mark of "Q." Shining Ferry formers, he has always been heavily insured against all kinds (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) from one point of view varies of risks that might temporarily prevent him from appearing the record. Purporting to be a novel of the ordinary on the concert platform. His two hands are permanently six-shilling design, it is actually a series of episodes underwritten for no less than £10,000, so that if either of and sketches of character strung together on the slimmest them sustained such an injury through accident or disease thread. It opens well with description of John Rosewarne, as would prevent him from playing for the future, or so the hard-headed business man, with his love tragedy hidden impair his powers as to render his performances of less value, in a heart whose secrets are jealously kept from the world. he would qualify for the large sums named. Of the other But the promise of a drama that would hold the reader in most famous concert performers, KUBELIK is generally under- thrall fades away to the futile ending of a marriage between stood to be one of the most heavily insured. He has stated Hester Marvin and Tom Trevarthen. Strewn by the way are that he pays £300 premium for insurance in respect of his charming chapters illustrating the manners and speech of the bow-hand alone, so that if prevented from fulfilling a single Cornwall folk whom "Q." knows so well. One of the most engagement he would receive £2,000 compensation. For a delightful is Nicky Vro, the boatman of the Ferry, whose total disablement of this hand he would receive £10,000. adamantine incredulity at the idea that the world in general. In the case of JOSEF HOFFMANN, not only each hand, but each and Troy Town in particular, could get along if he were individual finger, is separately insured. dismissed from his post, is told with rare touch of pathos and humour. The probability is that these cameos were originally prepared separately, and on afterthought strung together on the thread aforesaid. It is a case which varies the rule about second thoughts being best.

Such insurances are by no means confined to musical

performers. Each of the Australian cricketers is insured against any injury that would incapacitate him in the field, while most of the leading English players are protected in this way against the penalties of writer's cramp.

Mr. BEERBOHM TREE insures not only his general health but also his left hand and his left hip. If anything should occur to prevent these two portions of his anatomy from coming into picturesque conjunction he would receive a cheque of considerable dimensions. Mr. GEORGE ALEXANDER, in addition to his voice, insures his trouser-press.

In The House of Barnkirk (DUCKWORTH & Co.) AMY MCLAREN, its author, gives us a commencement sufficiently attractive; whereupon the guileless Baron, on the point of congratulating his faithful servants the Skipper and his boy on their having at last obtained a rest, pauses, gives the word to Mr. HAROLD BEGBIE pays a heavy premium on his adjective "stand by," and ere he has completed a bold attempt at box, and if at any time he failed to produce the required steering a straight course through another half-dozen epithet while writing one of his charming articles he would chapters is forced once again to set to work both Skipper be entitled to handsome compensation. and boy, that by their aid, through meandering creeks, avoiding several dangers, nicely turning many corners, or getting out and taking a short cut from rock to rock, the Baron may reach that haven of rest called Finis. Arrived, he regrets that, on the working out of what promised to be a really good plot, so much capability should have wasted itself in commonplaces of conversation and repetition of situation: moreover, that whatever was slightly weird should have become wearisome, and the possibly tragic, troublesome. The Baron, improving on the words of the Crown Prince of Denmark, exclaims, "Oh what a noble purpose was here o'erthrown!"

Mr. PLOWDEN's tongue is heavily insured, and he receives quite a handsome sum from a leading office whenever a sitting at the Marylebone Court yields no opening for a joke; but this is very seldom.

Mr. BERNARD SHAW's insurances are numerous and weighty. For instance, it is stated on the best authority that he pays no less than £500 premium to indemnify him against the humiliating consequences of official recognition, such as elevation to the ranks of the Order of Merit, election to the Athenæum Club under the Distinguished Rule, or inclusion in the ranks of the British Academy.

Amongst eminent publicists who have insured themselves heavily must be reckoned Mr. LEO MAXSE, the gifted editor of The Leading Actor would have been a title for Mr. the National Review. Thus it is an open secret that in the OPPENHEIM's romance more respectful to the Thespian proevent of his ever being converted to the Free Food heresy fession than The Master Mummer (WARD, LOCK & Co.), he would immediately become entitled to an annuity of £1500 though, even then, it would not be correctly descriptive of a year, while if he were ever so unfortunate as to find himself this story, where the principal tragedian is not so much its at a dinner party in company with Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL he hero as is his daughter, to whom her unhappy parent has to would at once be in a position to claim a sum of £2000. act, as an American would pronounce it, "both as mummer Furthermore, it is interesting to know that Mr. St. LOE and poppa." Those for whom dagger and bowl, air pistols, STRACHEY, the Editor of the Spectator, pays a premium of revolvers and knives, unut£200 to guard against the loss of prestige which might be terably wicked Superioresses sustained by his paper if he were in a moment of inadvertence of strange foreign convents, to accept the Order of the Red Eagle from the German naughty Barons, daring ArchEMPEROR. duchesses, cruel Countesses, Mr. BALFOUR'S intellect, so we understand, is permanently hairbreadth escapes, sanguinunderwritten for no less a sum than £20,000. Thus if he ary struggles with various were ever compelled to give a definition or make a statement violent villains, romantic resthe interpretation of which should be unanimously agreed on cues, and culminating coups by Mr. CHAPLIN, Mr. ASQUITH, Lord GEORGE HAMILTON, Mr. de théâtre, still possess some CHAMBERLAIN and Mr. ARTHUR ELLIOT, he will at once qualify charm, will find pretty well all for the sum mentioned. the above ingredients in this melodramatic and, to the Baron, rather tedious, story.

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Mr. HALL CAINE, the eminent Manx novelist, has taken out olicy of £5000 against being mistaken for BACON.

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B.-W.

EDITORS AND TRADE.

["The tailor's shop is mine,' replied the editor. He was running the two businesses together. The combination of incongruous businesses is much more common in London than one might think."-British Weekly.]

ARMED with the suggestion thus thrown out by our serious contemporary, a representative of this paper set forth yesterday morning in one of the new four-wheeled hansoms bent upon discovering some of the secrets adumbrated by the British Weekly's contributor.

After a series of masterly manœuvres in the neighbourhood of Printing House Square, for, as one may suppose, there is much secrecy to penetrate in these matters, our sleuth-hound ascertained that Mr. BUCKLE, the Editor of the Times, is by no means an idle man when off thundering duty. The great. universal providing establishment in Leather Lane, which is famous all over the world as Strap's Emporium, is in reality Mr. BUCKLE'S. Mr. BUCKLE'S is the brain that directs all STRAP's operations. But we cannot go so far as to state that contributions to the Times are paid by vouchers for STRAP's goods.

Mr. BUCKLE is by no means alone. The Editor of the Morning Post, Mr. FABIAN WARE, has a large factory in the Potteries, and a retail house in town for the supply of crockery for Socialists. Mr. BERNARD SHAW buys all his plates and dishes of Mr. FABIAN WARE.

Pursuing his investigations in Wellington Street, our representative made the startling discovery that Mr. ST. LOE STRACHEY, the Editor of the Spectator, keeps a cat and canary shop in Seven Dials as well as a gunsmith's establishment on Shooter's Hill for the manufacture of Lewis Morris Tubes and other lethal weapons employed by rifle clubs.

After a brief rest, rendered necessary by this momentous discovery, our special plenipotentiary made his way to the palatial offices of T.P.'s Weekly, and waited until the Editor emerged from the stately portals. Following the great publicist at a discreet distance for the space of several parasangs, he eventually tracked him down to a sumptuous creamery in Soho, where, under the genial pseudonym of PAT D'OYLY, the famous panegyrist drives a roaring trade in the richest and most nutritious butter.

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PILOTS THAT WANT DROPPING.
AIR-"Ye Mariners of England."

[See note to Cartoon on opposite page.]
YE mariners of Europe,

Who run our English seas,
And pouch, beneath the Union Jack,
Our native pilots' fees,

Under what flag do you propcse

To play the warrior tar,

When the foe wants to know

The trick of channel and bar,
When the slim torpedo-craft steal up
Over the harbour-bar.

Dumped out of various countries
Abutting on the brine,

'Tis nought to you what noble names
Have led our battle-line;
Why should you care how NELSON fell
In the triumph of Trafalgar-
When the night shrouds from sight
Channel and buoy and bar,
When the slim torpedo-craft steal up
Over the harbour-bar.

Wherever Mr. BULL works,

In bank or shop or mart,
You aliens enter in and learn
His business by the chart;
So here he trains you up to be
His rivals' guiding star
When they creep, while we sleep,
By channel and buoy and bar,
When the slim torpedo-craft steal up
Over the harbour-bar.

To you who share our seaways
On every ebb and flood,
The bond of British comradeship
Is not the bond of blood;

Nature, more close than foster-ties,
Would prove what race ye are,
When the keel of kindred steel

Slides in by channel and bar,

When the slim torpedo-craft steal up
Over the harbour-bar.

We spare, transpontius pilot,

To write you down a spy,

And yet you scarce could change your heart
Then when you changed your sky;

And, since we fain would keep our ships
Intact of bolt and spar,

You must go, ere the foe

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FROM "The Country Day by Day" (Daily Mail):"Daily the interest of our thronging bird-life grows. "See the whitebait, slim and tiny, a wanderer from the far south. attitudinising like some famous tenor on the top of a bramble twig.”

Can any of our readers quote similar cases of a minnow, say, or a smelt, performing on a hedge like a prima donna ? There is of course the famous Horatian example of fishes finding themselves up a tree in time of flood:

Piscium et summa genus hæsit ulmo; but these were ordinary, not singing, fishes.

THE VISCOUNT AND THE BIG GAME. (With acknowledgments to Lord Mountmorres' articles in the “Globe.") A JOURNALIST in Central Africa would indeed be dull if he had no interest in fauna. There must of necessity be long periods between one's despatches when little happens, either in the way of Belgian atrocities or other phases of tropical industry, when, were one to be totally careless of the surrounding animal life, time would hang heavily on one's hands. But given a flair for monkeys, or any skill with the gun, and one's life becomes a dream of delight. I found Central Africa teeming with big game. Wherever one struck off the main lines of communication one was safe to light upon elephants, buffalo, bush cattle, and an enormous variety of antelope, leopards, and a kind of cheetah with very sticky hoofs and a long brush, known in French as a gluepard. I shot specimens of these all day; and I never ceased to be amazed at the ignorance of Central Africa which is displayed in England and at the Natural History Museum. In connection with one of my feats 1 may tell a curious story. Strolling out one morning with my walking-stick rifle (which, by-the-way, is also a camp-stool and umbrella), I bowled over a brace of fine bull elephants, which I at once skinned. When I came to unpack my case in this country, I discovered the two elephant skins had disappeared, and in their place were two other skins belonging to a little mammal which forms, I believe, a kind of connecting link between two such distinct species as the guinea-pig tribe and the mammoth. The only way in which this substitution could possibly have come about is that during my stay at Avakubi, immediately before the case of skins was finally packed, I was comparing specimens with the resident official of the post, and by some error these skins must have got exchanged. But isn't it odd?

And monkeys. Of the larger Simians, one meets with practically unlimited baboons of all sizes, from those no larger than a cat up to those as large as a twelve-year-old child, and as powerful as a full-grown chauffeur. Then, to the west and north-west, more particularly in the French Congo, gorillas are fairly plentiful, but they are so preposterously delicate that I made no attempt at bringing any down country alive, as I was warned by everyone that I should never achieve it. I shot however great numbers. Moving eastward, the gorillas gradually give place to the chimpanzees, and in STANLEY'S forest and in the forest immediately south of the Uele they are very plentiful. One extraordinary fact about them and about several of the varieties of the smaller monkeys is the attraction which the white man, especially a lord, appears to have for them. They will have nothing to do with the native, but display an extraordinary curiosity concerning and attachment for the European. I found, over and over again, that in a day or two after catching a perfectly wild monkey, especially the younger ones, and more particularly those of the blue-faced (SCHMIDT'S and RECKITT'S) varieties and dog monkeys (which bark like a European dog), I was able completely to domesticate them. I have quite a houseful in England at this moment, some of which are being trained to write Cricket Notes for the morning papers. There is nothing they cannot do. Snakes too

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RIGHT MEN IN THE WRONG PLACE.

SHADE OF NELSON. "WHAT DO YOU CALL THESE, MA'AM?"

BRITANNIA. "OH, THEY'RE SOME OF MY ALIEN PILOTS."

SHADE OF NELSON. "WHAT, IN BRITISH WATERS? H'M-IN MY DAY WE KEPT OUR SECRETS TO OURSELVES!"

["Gravest of all was the risk arising from the fact that fifty-nine foreign pilots are employed on our coasts. British ships abroad were compelled to take native pilots, and he wished to see an Act passed that no alien should be granted a pilotage certificate for English waters."-Report of Admiral Sir N. Bowden-Smith's Speech at the Royal United Service Institution.]

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