* * * * *

THE MINERS' OPERA.

About a week ago, when they took Titterby away to the large red-brick
establishment which he now adorns, certain papers which were left lying
in his study passed into my hands, for I was almost his only friend. It
had long been Titterby's belief that a great future lay before the
librettist who should produce topical light operas on the GILBERT and
SULLIVAN model, dealing with our present-day economic crises. The thing
became an _idée fixe_, as the French say, or, as we lamely put it in
English, a fixed idea. There can be no doubt that he was engaged in the
terrible task of fitting the current coal dispute to fantastic verse
when a brain-cell unhappily buckled, and he was found destroying the
works of his grand piano with a coal-scoop.

Most of the MS. in my possession is blurred and undecipherable, full of
erasures, random stage-directions and marginal notes, amongst which
occasional passages such as the following "emerge" (as Mr. SMILLIE would
say):--

"_Secretary._ The fellow is standing his ground,
He's as stubborn and stiff as a war-mule.

_Minister._ A
Means will be found
If we look all around
To arrive at a suitable formula.