If any apology is necessary for returning to a subject which in the ordinary course of events would hardly be thought of for snather forty-five weeks to come, we must plead the ingenuity of a French journalist. whose idea is too original to be overlooked. It occurred to him to question a number of notabilities as to what they would like to find in their stockings on Christmas morning, if they could have any wish gratified. Here are some of the answers. General Gallifet, ex-Minister of War from the before M. Herve had the anti-militarist campaign which has landed him io providential gaol, replied briefly: "I should like to find the old Fra Jules Lemattre asked for" repose considering that M. Lemsftre is an adherent of the, Nationalist cause, which has been little heard of in recent years, his demand seems feasible. M. Jules Claretie, director of the Comédie Francaise, wished for' my twenty years and the French frontier as it used to be at that date." Gyp the novelist, otherwise known as the Comtesse de Martel, asked for "a good absolute monarchy other novelists might have been leas altruistic, but the cir-colation of Gyp is already enormous. The Vicomte de Vogué wished that in his stocking he might find the lost. sounds, perhaps, a little " French." Mme. Yvette Guilbert demanded her figure as it was at the age of cighteen; and M. Theodore Reinach, the great financier, asked for "a journal which will speak the truth and nothing but the truth." Here the inquiry closed, according to some auth "in the confusion born of impossibility," bat practically because every French journal hastened to submit to M. Reinach its terms of subscription.
Febroary 12.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.