For my part, however, I swear by a Chesterfield sofa, a large one, on which you can lie at full length, as I am lying now; the most comfortable thing there is on earth, I think, except perhaps a truss of hay, when one has been riding for about six consecutive hours in an army saddle.  But there are disadvantages even about a Chesterfield sofa.  It is, to begin with, in the drawing-room and in the drawing-room one is not so entirely immune from the trivial incidents of everyday life as I like to be when I am having brain-waves.  Doors are opened and this creates a draught, and it is not the slightest use attempting a real work of imagination when people will come in and ask if I am lying on The Literary Supplement of The Times (as if it were likely), or the anti-aircraft gun that the children were playing with after lunch.  For this reason I have had to invent an even better thing than the ordinary Chesterfield sofa, and since it will be, when made, the noblest piece of scientific upholstery in the world I will ask the printer to write the next sentence in italics, please.

It is a Chesterfield sofa enclosed on all four sides. Thank you.

The marvels of this receptacle for human thought will dawn upon the reader by slow degrees.  Try to imagine yourself ensconced there, having climbed up by the short flight of steps which will be attached to it, enisled and remote amidst the surging traffic that sweeps through a drawing-room.  Instead of making a rapid bolt to escape from callers and probably meeting them full tilt in the hall, you simply stay on, thinking.  You have nothing to fear from them, unless they are so inquisitive and ill-mannered as to come and peep over the edge.  With plenty of tobacco, a writing tablet and a fountain-pen, you can stare at the anaglypta ceiling and dream noble thoughts and put them down when you like without interruption.  On sunny days the apparatus can be wheeled on to the balcony, where the sapphire sky will be exchanged for the anaglypta ceiling; and for winter use a metal base will be supplied, under which you can place either an oil-stove or an electric radiator.

I should like to see this four-sided Chesterfield in offices also.  The master-strokes of commercial and administrative skill would be much more masterly with most people if they did not have to proceed from a hard office chair.  You can easily dictate to a typist from the interior of a Chesterfield, and, though I know that business men and Government officials are often subjected to deputations, during which they have to look their persecutors in the face, this difficulty could be overcome by means of a sliding panel, through which the face of the recumbent administrator could be poked when necessary, wearing the proper expression of shrewdness, terror, conciliation or rage.  I should like Sir ERIC GEDDES to have one of my four-sided Chesterfields.