e.

Next door to the shaving and smoking tray should be the book-rest. I don't
myself do much reading in the bath, but I have several sisters-in-law who
keep on coming to stay, and they all do it. Few things make the leaves of a
book stick together so easily as being dropped in a hot bath, so they had
better have a book-rest; and if they go to sleep I shall set in motion my
emergency waste mechanism, by which the bath can be emptied in malice from
outside.

Another of my inventions is the Progress Indicator. It works like the
indicators outside lifts, which show where the lift is and what it is
doing. My machine shows what stage the man inside has reached--the washing
stage or the merely wallowing stage, or the drying stage, or the exercises
stage. It shows you at a glance whether it is worth while to go back to bed
or whether it is time to dig yourself in on the mat. The machine is
specially suitable for hotels and large country houses where you can't find
out by hammering on the door and asking, because nobody takes any notice.

When you have properly fitted out the bathroom on these lines all that
remains is to put the telephone in and have your meals there; or rather to
have your meals there and not put the telephone in. It must still remain
the one room where a man is safe from that.

A. P. H.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Mistress._ "I SEE THE NEW CURATE HAS CALLED. WHAT IS HE
LIKE, SMITHERS?"

_Butler_ (_who had noticed that the Curate was dressed for golf_). "HE HAD
THE APPEARANCE, MY LADY, OF BEING OUT OF 'OLY ORDERS FOR THE DAY."]

* * * * *

NATIONAL COAL.

A great deal of nonsense is being talked about our coal-mines. I should
like therefore to throw a little helpful light on the subject of
nationalisation. Speaking as an owner and not as a miner (I have at the
present moment at least six coals and a pound or two of assorted mineral
rubbish), I want to consider some of the pros and cons of this debatable
proposition. I take it, first of all, that we shall pay for our coal along
with our taxes and in proportion to our income. This will come rather hard,
of course, on the kind of people who insist on warming their rooms with
three large electric vegetable marrows, or by means of a number of small
skeletons pickled in gas. But such people will no doubt be able to claim
rebates, and rebating is one of the most healthy and instructive of our