To Charlie, the function of a house was to keep the dew off your swag at night and shade the waterbag and tuckerboxes during the day.

He went back to his play like an opium-smoker back to his drug. He revised and re-arranged and revamped. He closed his eyes, valiantly, and cut away whole act-ends, at one grim stroke, like a surgeon operating on his own flesh and blood.

Perhaps then the punishment of the Chester ale-wife was intended to be a real warning to women traders. If this is the case, then the Chester ale-wife transcends the boundary of comedy, and her appearance shows a real fear of working women's threat to the market.

It is, however, precisely here that the weakness of hypothecation lies, for governments are not likely readily to surrender control over the disposition of taxes they impose.