THE BOOM AT LAST .sx You too will have noticed how sensitive is " the City " to the events of the outside world .sx Small blame to them at the moment , poor dears , the City and the outside world being what they are ; but even in the prosperous days of the past the City , if I remember right , was almost equally sensitive .sx There is a General Strike in Hong Kong and Nitrates harden on the London Stock Exchange .sx A General Election in Brazil and money at once becomes cheaper in the City .sx A statesman is divorced in Berlin and Anglo-Italian Tin shares come tumbling down .sx Mysterious .sx It is all very well to keep one's finger on the pulses of the world and all that , but the City seems to have its finger on its own pulse permanently .sx I may only be showing my abysmal ignorance , but is there any real reason why the price of tin or British Rail-way shares should dash up and down when someone is assassinated in the Balkans ?sx Most of us live by buying or selling something , and most of us read the papers ; but we do not change our prices after breakfast every day .sx If it were announced to-morrow that Newfoundland had seceded from the Empire the price of Mr. HUGH WALPOLE'S novels would remain precisely the same ; but you would see British Railway Stock ( and of course Nitrates ) bubbling up and down like a crazy thermometer .sx I do not believe that a revolution in Ireland would reduce my tailor's prices by a half-penny ; but it would do the most terrible things to the price of Nitrates .sx Why ?sx Well , the City will give you a lot of wise , long-winded and wholly unintelligible answers to that question .sx But .sx the real answer is that stock-brokers are a set of very highly-strung men who stand about all day telling stories and getting on each other's nerves .sx And I can prove that .sx For it is not only the real disaster in Yucatan that depresses Nitrates and causes a feeble tone in British Municipal Stock ; the merest rumour will do it .sx A rumour the other day caused a sharp fall in certain extremely steady securities .sx That is to say , when the hard-headed business men heard the rumour they said , " My hat !sx " and sold all their Burbleton Trams .sx And when they heard that the rumour was only a rumour the hard-headed business men said " My hat !sx " and bought Burbleton Trams again ; moreover they were so excited by the whole affair that they bought some Tin , Nitrates , and Huddersfield Electrics as well , so that a healthy tone was re-marked in various markets .sx That is how the hard-headed business man gets tired it is chiefly emotion .sx The City is as sensitive as the sensitive-plant , which shrivels up when you touch it , opens out when you've gone away and looks as good as new again .sx And now I have a confession to make .sx I started that rumour .sx And there is worse far worse .sx When I was in Ceylon ( or somewhere ) I spent many happy hours teasing the sensitive plant ; I loved to see it shrivel , and even more I loved to watch it coming back to normal .sx Another lunatic and I used to have time-races between two sensitive plants to see which made the quicker " comeback .sx " Ah , those were days !sx Where was I ?sx Oh , yes .sx Well , I have a friend named Bloat who is a hard-hatted stock- broker , and of course a mass of nerves .sx However , he is extremely popular , a good storyteller , and spends , I gather , nearly the whole day telling stories or hearing stories .sx He tells so many stories that he is always ready to hear a new one , and he tells them so well that his colleagues are always ready for him to pass a new one on .sx Well , one day , a long time ago , I thought it would be rather fun to prod the sensitive-plant and depress the price of Nitrates ( never having owned a Nitrate myself) .sx Obviously I could not hope for a better instrument than Bloat , who sees nearly all the stock-brokers every day .sx So I told Bloat a rather disturbing story I had heard about President HOOVER's health .sx Bloat seemed deeply interested ; I watched the Financial Column , and sure enough two days later I saw that Nitrates had sagged to 21 , while the bottom had dropped out of Scottish Linoleums owing to disquieting reports from Washington .sx Then my conscience began to smite me .sx That evening I waylaid Bloat on his way home by Underground and told him that an aunt of mine had cabled me .sx from Delhi that the VICEROY had just had a round of golf with Mr. GANDHI .sx Bloat is a mere child ; he should never leave the house without a trained nurse .sx The next evening I read that Nitrates had rallied to 25 , while British gilt-edged stocks , opening nervously , had finished strongly , and even British Railways had shown a healthy tone .sx After that , alas , my patriotic conscience was not strong enough to resist my artistic instinct .sx The game was too good .sx I fed Bloat ( on the Underground ) with startling stories every Tuesday and Friday .sx There were earthquakes in California and murders in Moscow , divorces at the White House and abdications in Italy ; the health of Mr. HOOVER and Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD , the intentions of Mr. LLOYD GEORGE , the machinations of STALIN , the ambitions of Sir OSWALD MOSLEY , the conscience of Senator BORAH I played the liveliest variations on them all .sx And Bloat never failed .sx Every time I saw Tin and Nitrates soar or sag ; Manganese faltered ; Copper fell ; Rubber rallied ; British Railways went up and down like monkeys on sticks .sx Three times I brought the Bank Rate down .sx And I gloried in my power .sx Mr. MORGAN and Mr. LAMONT kept trotting over the Atlantic to Paris and London to find out .sx what secret influence in Europe was messing up the market and tearing down the Gold Standard .sx They never found out anything .sx For it was me !sx I have to confess that I and I alone ( well , I and Bloat , if you like ) am are responsible for the recent world slump which has worried us all for so long ; we are the " world-causes " to which the KING'S Ministers refer so often .sx And .sx here and now I apologise to all concerned .sx We have played the game too long .sx Bloat and I have upset the markets so much that it will take a certain effort to get them right again .sx But that effort I have begun .sx Yesterday I told Bloat that a .sx relative of Mr. BALDWIN is .sx engaged to marry a relative .sx of Mr. MACDONALD .sx To-day .sx I see that Nitrates have gone .sx to 73 .sx And I have better .sx things still to come .sx Ladies and .sx Gentlemen , you may take it .sx that the boom is on .sx A. P. H. .sx REVELRY BY NIGHT .sx I WAS never very good at Victorian games .sx I was always one of the earliest to be bumped off at Musical Chairs .sx Unstable at Honeypots , at Clumps I did not excel .sx When they had Nuts and May I was seized by a sense of terror , only too well-founded , lest I should be pulled over by some fat and powerful girl and laughed at by all my peers .sx Even in the staider , more literary games I was not a success .sx I was always the one to whom they said , " No , no .sx That isn't what you have to do .sx Think of an adjective beginning with p and ending with q that applies to your second neighbour from the left , put it down on a piece of paper , fold the top over , pass it to your third neighbour from the right , and afterwards make a noise like a buffalo .sx You mustn't make a noise like a buffalo first .sx " Everybody else , you see , had been busily writing down adjectives on their bits of paper and passing them rapidly about to each other when my deep tremendous bellow came out all alone .sx I had anticipated the clou of the fun .sx When a lot of questions were put into one top-hat and a lot of nouns into another , and a piece of poetry had to be written answering the question and embodying the noun , I was always left blushing at the end , unable to find a rhyme for " treacle " which would also explain how Cock Robin was killed .sx Why this was I do not know .sx Others apparently no brighter than myself triumphantly surmounted the obstacles and became the centre of admiring throngs .sx But not I. And then , again , I was always one of the people who were sent out of the room .sx I never wanted to be sent out of the room , not even on the occasions when quite a lot of us went out in a kind of shuffling mob , and we had to wait about in the hall for some time , and come back all together jumping like fleas .sx I never jumped very hard .sx I used to come back at the tail end of the procession and execute very modest little jumps quite close to the door , so that I could get out again quickly before the people inside began to hiss at me .sx Sometimes I would scarcely trouble to come in at all when we went onto do " cheese,'' which was acted nearly in the same way as " fleas , " except that we crawled without jumping instead of crawling first and jumping afterwards ; or " sneeze , " which was very difficult to act at all , because it had to be done silently .sx That was the rule .sx Still , there was nothing really terrible in going out of the room as a member of a large gang or herd .sx Now and again I used to make quite good suggestions for dividing up some difficult word like " caustic " or " garbage " into two pieces , and first of all acting the two pieces separately and then acting the whole word at once ; and I would join in looting the house for hats and sticks and bells and shawls , and in taking coverlets off the beds and going to the pantry to find cups and trays .sx But when the half-word , which had taken nearly twenty-five minutes to rehearse , was being acted I sustained none of the principal roles .sx Nor was I offended , as some of the cast were , that nobody tried very hard to guess what it was all about at the end , because the carriages had come and we were obliged to wrap up carefully , dears and go home .sx The thing that I really detested was to be sent out of the room , the nice warm room , by myself .sx I had to come back .sx blindfolded , walking backwards , and ask everyone a question in turn .sx When they answered , I had to guess what character in history they were thinking of , and whatever I said they burst into roars of ribald laughter at my foolish reply .sx I had to go on asking question after question until the savage blood-lust of my persecutors was glutted with the spectacle of my shame .sx Now they tell me that the vogue for Victorian games is being revived .sx What sort of games , whether it is the quiet or the noisy kind , I do not know .sx But l suspect the worst .sx I am dining at " The Yews , " near Woking , some time next week .sx I suspect we shall play Victorian games there .sx I am to be the guest of Colonel and Mrs. Murgatroyd , who like to do the latest thing , and we shall decide after dinner , I suppose , not to play bridge nor blame the Government nor compare motor-cars .sx Lady Gloop and Sir George Windlass are almost certain to be there .sx Canon and Mrs. Barker may be present also .sx I suspect that we shall have a lively round of " Consequences " and " Telegrams " first , and then , when all the adjectives and adverbs and pencils and pieces of paper have been exhausted , we shall settle down to something rather more noisy , like " Here am I to Torment you , Sir !sx " Have you ever played " Here am I to Torment you , Sir ?sx " .sx