... THE Ponders were in the van of Fashion; that is to say, the Ponders themselves thought so, and by dint of frequent and judicious repetition induced a large number of their friends to believe it, and they daily abased themselves in reverential rows commencing on the Ponders' immaculate doorstep and ending in their iniquitously expensive green and gold drawing-room. Sir William, it should be ...

... i _gj i r j yi --3^^ I T i/r5K''rtad8 glopgmgnt By FREDERICK FENN MRS. RUTLAND was one of those people whose chief interest in life lay in fancying that she was unhappy. She felt that she ought to be pitied for having married John Rutland, and for having sacrificed the delights of London to become the sober wife of a substantial country gentle man and J. P. As a result, she spent her early ...

... v By C. STARR JOHNS MAX VON WOLLEN BERG dismissed his motor at a corner and walked rapidly along the Herthestrasse. Many men, who knew him by sight, saluted him respectfully, but he barely acknowledged their salutations, indeed, he hardly appeared to notice them. A small house stood a little way back from its neighbours. Here he paused, and rang the bell vigorously. Is your mistress in Yes, ...

... BY JESSIE G. COURT The Bystander M Surprise Story ...

... r Put It Down in the Bill BY HARFORD WORLOCK J C 'I'M just going round the shops, said Patricia, feel like coming? That little pig went to market this little pig stayed at home, I answered. Talking of pigs reminds me, Patricia chipped in do you think, if you approached him tactfully, the landlord might put a wing on to the larder Talking of pigs and wings, 1 observed, they might fly. ...

... SACRIFICE By FRED M. WHITE Ciy -r.pv Cr-- -rr- -^f-' irC*' C^fy VERNON FORSYTH was growing just a little tired of it. He wanted to get away to the edge of the river and smoke; the tangle in his new comedy was worrying him again. After all, there are dis advantages in being a popular playwright. There were other matters, too. He was disturbed, too, about Hetty Harbord. It was true she had a ...

... Mute&osef) LATE in the night of that most fate ful of days, the fourth of August, 1914, the Colonel of a regiment which I must not name chanced to meet his senior subaltern at the corner of St. James's Street. The Colonel, who was in uniform, stopped the car which had just brought him from Aldershot, and beckoned to the other to join him. You're the very fellow I want to see, Mr. I1 Ringstone. ...

... By ALFRED E. SNODGRASS IT is the little things in life that tell. Every mole hill of circumstance is a mountain of consequence. If Ralph Merton had not stopped at a certain sheltered corner to light his pipe, his life would have been another story altogether. 1 here was a strong wind blowing along the sea front, and it required several matches to get the tobacco properly aglow. When at last ...

... THE Passing 'OF By Hannen Swaffer WELL, now Daly's has gone the way of all tradition. They offered £230,000 for it the other day for a talkie theatre! Humorists even said that Sam Isaacs wanted to buy it because It looked a very nice plaice! Daly's comic operas are dead, so much so that Harry Welchman, reviving an old one and trying to stage a new one, lost £8,000 in a few weeks, and then, ...

... THE LAST V BLUFF BY HAROLD THIRKELL IN a little upper chamber of the Imperial Palace at Potsdam sat the Supreme War Council-- a council of six only. The Kaiser was there, looking 1 morose and dissatisfied and I Mackensen and Von Hindenburs. the army's leaders of offensive, men of iron and brain i combined. Scholmein, too, was there, whose name even yet strikes the ear strangely, though we have ...

... BY BASIL H. WATT IT'S of no consequence at all, I assure you,'' said Miss Phyllida Steggs. Her parents had christened her Phyllida twenty years before in the expectation that she would be petite and shy. She had grown up tall and self-assured, and her manner combined sentiment with considerable savoir-faire. Both these qualities she derived from her papa and mamma. James Steggs owned two ...

... By C. EDWARDES LADY ANNABEL had at last made the great renunciation. She lay back in her sables-- and Captain Marlow's right arm-- and rejoiced in her courage. It was a night of brilliant stars, about three- quarters of a moon, and no wind; and they were on a main road untroubled by traffic. The clock in the church steeple of the last village through which they had whizzed for the ...