still with you in Trafalgar Square in the midst of the traffic while
you ask me silly riddles, but not if you persist in bringing with you
that absurd umbrella. You are too handy with it. Put it back in the
rack before we start, or go out by yourself."

Besides, my sense of justice is outraged. Why should the short
brother be banged and thumped without reason? The Greek dramatist
would have explained to us that the shorter brother had committed a
crime against the gods. Aristophanes would have made the longer
brother the instrument of the Furies. The riddles he asked would
have had bearing upon the shorter brother's sin. In this way the
spectator would have enjoyed amusement combined with the satisfactory
sense that Nemesis is ever present in human affairs. I present the
idea, for what it may be worth, to the concoctors of knockabout
turns.

[Where Brotherly (and Sisterly) Love reigns supreme]

The family tie is always strong on the music-hall stage. The
acrobatic troupe is always a "Family": Pa, Ma, eight brothers and
sisters, and the baby. A more affectionate family one rarely sees.
Pa and Ma are a trifle stout, but still active. Baby, dear little
fellow, is full of humour. Ladies do not care to go on the music-
hall stage unless they can take their sister with them. I have seen
a performance given by eleven sisters, all the same size and
apparently all the same age. She must have been a wonderful woman--
the mother. They all had golden hair, and all wore precisely similar
frocks--a charming but decolletee arrangement--in claret-coloured
velvet over blue silk stockings. So far as I could gather, they all
had the same young man. No doubt he found it difficult amongst them