The heroine can never hope for a tranquil existence like other people.  I read of one only recently who, just because she strongly objected to the man her parents wanted her to marry, was flung with him on an iceberg that had only seating capacity for two.  And when the iceberg began to melt—­ writers must at times manipulate the elements—­it meant that she must either watch the man drown or share the same seat with him.  The rescue party held off, of course, until the harassed girl was sitting on his knees, and then received the pair as they slid down, announcing their engagement.

What do I intend to do with Bertram and Eunice?  I am undecided whether to place them in the vicinity of a volcano, which, unknown to Bertram, has eruptive tendencies, or to send them up in an aeroplane and break the propeller in mid-Atlantic just as the rescue party (including the husband)—­What?  Do I understand anything about aeroplanes?  Certainly not; but I know everything about heroines.

* * * * *

EVIDENCE.

“What’s all this I hear about the Abbey?” said my friend Truscott when I met him yesterday.

Truscott has just returned from New Zealand and is for the moment a little behind the times.  But he can pick up the threads as quickly as most men.

“It’s in a bad way,” I told him.  “All kinds of defects in the fabric, and there’s a public fund to make it sound again.  You ought to subscribe.”

“It may be in disrepair,” he replied, “but it isn’t going to fall down just yet.  I know; I went to see it this morning.”

“But how do you know?” I asked.  “You may guess; you can’t know.”

“I know,” he said, “because I was told.  A little bird told me, and there’s no authority half so good.  Do you remember a few years ago a terrific storm that blew down half the elms in Kensington Gardens?”

I remembered.  I had reason; for the trunks and branches were all over the road and my omnibus from Church Street to Piccadilly Circus had to make wide detours.

“Well,” Truscott continued, “someone wrote to the papers to say that two or three days before the storm all the rooks left the trees and did not return.  They knew what was coming.  Birds do know, you know, and that’s why I feel no immediate anxiety about the Abbey.”

“Explain,” I said.

“Well,” he continued, “when I was there this morning I watched a sparrow popping in and out of a nest built in a niche in the stonework over the north door.”

* * * * *

[Illustration:  MANNERS AND MODES.

THEN AND NOW.

From an Early-Victorian “Etiquette for Gentlemen.”—­“A GENTLEMAN CANNOT BE TOO CAREFUL TO AVOID STEPPING ON A LADY’S DRESS WHEN ABOUT TO GET IN OR OUT OF A CARRIAGE.”]

* * * * *

THOUGHTS ON “THE TIMES.”

(FROM A TRAIN.)