what is your magazine itself but vaudeville, with
your contributors all doing their stunts of fiction, or poetry, or
travel, or sketches of life, or articles of popular science and
sociological interest, and I don't know what all! What are your
illustrations but the moving pictures of the kalatechnoscope! Why," he
said, with inspiration, "what are you yourself but a species of Chaser
that comes at the end of the show, and helps clear the ground for the
next month's performance by tiring out the lingering readers?"

"You don't think," we suggested, "you're being rather unpleasant?"

Our friend laughed harshly, and we were glad to see him restored to so
much cheerfulness, at any rate. "I think the notion is a pretty good
fit, though if you don't like to wear it I don't insist. Why should you
object to being likened to those poor fellows who come last on the
programme at the vaudeville? Very often they are as good as the others,
and sometimes, when I have determined to get my five hours' enjoyment to
the last moment before six o'clock, I have had my reward in something
unexpectedly delightful in the work of the Chasers. I have got into
close human relations with them, I and the half-dozen brave spirits who
have stuck it out with me, while the ushers went impatiently about,
clacking the seats back, and picking up the programmes and lost articles
under them. I have had the same sense of kindly comradery with you, and
now and then my patience has been rewarded by you, just as it has been
by the Chasers at the vaudeville, and I've said so to people. I've said:
'You're wrong to put down the magazine the way most of you do before you
get to those departments at the end. Sometimes there are quite good
things in them.'"

"Really," said the unreal editor, "you seem to have had these remarks
left over from your visit to the real editor. We advise you to go back
and repeat them. They may cause him to revise his opinion of your
contribution."

"It's no use my going back. I read finality in his eye before I left
him, and I feel that no compliment, the most fulsome, would move him.
Don't turn me out! I take it all back about your being a Chaser. You are
the first act on the bill for me. I read the magazine like a Chinese
book--from the back. I always begin with the Easy Chair."

"Ah, now you are talking," we said, and we thought it no more than human
to ask, "What is it you have been saying about the vaudeville, anyway?"

The reje