ence given to examples with dates or inscriptions."

_Advt. in "The Challenge."_

We were just going to offer our Vicar, but he has no inscription on him.

* * * * *

PLATITUDES: THE NEW GAME.

It is based on "Bromides" and any one can play it. The least educated
has a chance of winning and an Oxford degree is no bar to success--quite
the reverse, in fact; indeed I have known dons....

This is how it is played. Two people are seated in easy-chairs, for it
has been found that you cannot be too comfortable for this game; any
discomfort is apt to excite the mind, to disturb the grey matter, to
interfere with that complete repose which is so essential a feature of
the contest. These two are the players. They indulge in small talk and
the smaller talker wins. The object of each player is to make such
inanely conventional remarks that his opponent is reduced to silence.
For example you are sitting next to a bishop, and it falls to you to
start the conversation. Of course you don't say anything like "How sad
about this Kikuyu business." No, you open like this. "Are you fond of
dancing?" you say. The bishop will reply coldly, "It is many years since
I danced." You sigh and murmur, "Ah! the dear old days!" I cannot
imagine what his lordship will say next.

Of course the conversation in Platitudes must be connected and coherent.
There is no use repeating "Wollah wollah, gollah gollah, ASQUITH must
go, We want eight," or things of that sort. And you must not make mere
blank statements like "The number of cigars annually imported into the
U.S.A. is 26,714,811," unless they can be introduced deftly into the
conversation.

You must imagine yourself paying a call in a London drawing-room, and
you must say nothing that would not be possible and indeed suitable in
that _milieu_. To attempt to arouse any interest or show any
intelligence is wrong, but then neither must you betray any sign of
actual imbecility. Anything that approaches gibbering cannot be too
strongly condemned.

The players speak in turn and quotations are not allowed (at least not
from living writers). The question as to whose talk is the smaller of
the two is so much a matter of taste that the game can only be decided
by an umpire or by the votes of the spectators. But there is seldom
much doubt. It is not uncommon for one of the players to break down and
become almost hysterical, and few can hold out long against one of the