e--and this
he is never likely to do as far as I am concerned--he would be able to
retrieve his fortunes by taking up the profession of a publisher of
poetical works. Yet this is just what happened, in Mr. MONCKTON HOFFE'S
play, with the firm of _Wilberforce Brothers_, Turf Commissioners. In
the first Act we find them in such straits that they can barely scrape
together enough petty cash to satisfy the demands of a Water-Rate
Collector, insistent on the door-step. In the next Act, a year later,
they are all flourishing like green bay-trees as a firm of Poetry
Commissioners trading under the name of _The Lotus Publishing Company_.
This amazing result they have achieved by foisting on the office
typewriter--_tres gamine_--the poetical output of one of their own
number, and exploiting her as a prodigy under the auspices of a patron
of the arts--one _Lord Glandeville_. How this Maecenas, this connoisseur
in taste, was ever imposed upon by the masquerading of such incredible
types, and how they could have amassed all that wealth by the
publication of serious poetry, the most notorious of drugs on the
market--these are among the "things" that we should all "like to know"
in case our own professions should fail us.

What worried me most was that Mr. HOFFE should have so poor an idea of
my intelligence as to suppose it possible to impart an atmosphere of
probability to a scheme that was pure farce. Yet that was what he tried
to do; he wanted me to believe that I was assisting at a comedy. There
was no knockabout business; nobody entered the room with a somersault,
tripped over a pin or hung his hat on the scenery. They all behaved as
if they were presenting us with what is known as a human document, to be
regarded _au grand_ (or, at worst, _au petit_) _serieux_. The fun--and
there were some very pleasant touches--was not so much the fun of a huge
and preposterous joke, but rather the humour of character or incidental
detail. The part of _Lord Glandeville_, who might have been made the
most ridiculous butt of imposture, was treated quite solemnly. Indeed,
our sympathies were provoked for a man whose finest instincts had been
trifled with; who had been suffered to fall in love with the poet-soul
of a girl only to find that she was the tool of a gang of rogues. One of
them, _Dick Gilder_, might tell him that he (_Glandeville_) was an
egoist and that he ought to have fallen in love with the girl's body, as
he (_Gilder_) had done, i