at comedy cannot exist
nowadays, for the simple reason that gentlemen have given up taking snuff
and wearing swords. How can one have comedy in company with
frock-coats--without its "Las" and its "Odds Bobs."

The sword may have been helpful. I have been told that at _levees_ City
men, unaccustomed to the thing, have, with its help, provided comedy for
the rest of the company.

But I take it this is not the comedy our dramatist had in mind.

Why not an Exhibition of Gentlemen?

It seems a pity that comedy should disappear from among us. If it depend
entirely on swords and snuff-boxes, would it not be worth the while of
the Society of Authors to keep a few gentlemen specially trained? Maybe
some sympathetic theatrical manager would lend us costumes of the
eighteenth century. We might provide them with swords and snuff-boxes.
They might meet, say, once a week, in a Queen Anne drawing-room,
especially prepared by Gillow, and go through their tricks. Authors
seeking high-class comedy might be admitted to a gallery.

Perhaps this explains why old-fashioned readers complain that we do not
give them human nature. How can we? Ladies and gentlemen nowadays don't
wear the proper clothes. Evidently it all depends upon the clothes.

CHAPTER XX

Woman and her behaviour.

Should women smoke?

The question, in four-inch letters, exhibited on a placard outside a
small newsvendor's shop, caught recently my eye. The wanderer through
London streets is familiar with such-like appeals to his decision:
"Should short men marry tall wives?" "Ought we to cut our hair?" "Should
second cousins kiss?" Life's problems appear to be endless.

Personally, I am not worrying myself whether women should smoke or not.
It seems to me a question for the individual woman to decide for herself.
I like women who smoke; I can see no objection to their smoking. Smoking
soothes the nerves. Women's nerves occasionally want soothing. The
tiresome idiot who argues that smoking is unwomanly denounces the
drinking of tea as unmanly. He is a wooden-headed person who derives all
his ideas from cheap fiction. The manly man of cheap fiction smokes a
pipe and drinks whisky. That is how we know he is a man. The womanly
woman--well, I always feel I could make a better woman myself out of an
old clothes shop and a hair-dresser's block.

But, as I have said, the question does not impress me as one demanding my
particular attenti