ternoon was Mr. MACQUISTEN'S brief comments upon
Ministerial replies. Divorced from their setting, such remarks as "Fish
is very dear!" (_a propos_ of Admiralty parsimony in compensating the
owners of drifters) or "By thought-reading?" (when the best method of
ascertaining native opinion on the future of Rhodesia was in question),
may not sound particularly funny, but, when delivered in a voice of
peculiar penetration and "Scotchiness," at precisely the right moments,
they were sufficient to convulse the Benches. Mr. MACQUISTEN must be
careful or he will soon be a spoiled DARLING.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Waiter (at public dinner, to very hot and red-faced
diner_). "I'M GOING NOW, SIR. ANYTHING MORE I CAN GET YOU? BRANDY OR
PORT? NO, SIR? SHALL I GET YOU A COOL CHAIR, SIR?"]

* * * * *

"Cigar smokers will be interested very much in the likelihood of
that luxury being soon dearer than ever.... It will most likely
develop into a habit of getting the very last whiffff ffffout of
every cigar."--_Provincial Paper_.

The printer would seem to be practising already.

* * * * *

"HOW TO HEAR MUSIC."

_(With humble acknowledgments to the critic of "The Times.")_

We were grateful to Mlle. Snouck Hugronje for giving us an opportunity
of hearing the Violin Concertos of Prenk Bib Doda in C sharp minor, and
of Basil Tulkinghorn in the composite key of F.E. The latter work, we
may explain, is dedicated to Lord BIRKENHEAD. Doda's work is so rarely
played that Mr. ERNEST NEWMAN has wittily suggested that he ought to be
renamed Dodo. But let that pass. Here he is abundantly like himself,
rich in self-determining phrases which emerge from a Hinterland of wild
surmise, and tower aloft in peaks of Himalayan majesty like Haramokh or
Siniolchum ---- Mr. CANDLER must finish this sentence.

Tulkinghorn is also a master of transcendental effects, and as
relentless in pushing home his points as Mr. SMILLIE when examining a
duke before the Coal Commission. But he is not always to be trusted. He
lacks the architectonic faculty. In between the clusters of clear-cut
phrases there are too many nebulae of gaseous formation and spiral type,
which deflect the orbital movement of his essentially electronic melody
and impair its impact on the naked ear.

But when Mlle. Snouck Hugronje plays you forget all about
self-determination,