Tum-Tum! Drum business on the two last syllables.
I'm so excited, I shan't sleep a wink to-night. I'm off

to-morrow by the ten-fifteen. I've wired to Hermanova to
lunch with me."

If any of the rest of the family felt any excitement
over the creation of Cousin Teresa, they were signally

successful in concealing the fact.
"Poor Lucas does take his silly little ideas

seriously," said Colonel Harrowcluff afterwards in the
smoking-room.

"Yes," said his younger son, in a slightly less
tolerant tone, "in a day or two he'll come back and tell

us that his sensationalmasterpiece is above the heads of
the public, and in about three weeks' time he'll be wild

with enthusiasm over a scheme to dramatise the poems of
Herrick or something equally promising."

And then an extraordinary thing befell. In defiance
of all precedent Lucas's glowing anticipations were

justified and endorsed by the course of events. If
Cousin Teresa was above the heads of the public, the

public heroically adapted itself to her altitude.
Introduced as an experiment at a dull moment in a new

REVUE, the success of the item was unmistakable; the
calls were so insistent and uproarious that even Lucas'

ample devisings of additional "business" scarcely
sufficed to keep pace with the demand. Packed houses on

successive evenings confirmed the verdict of the first
night audience, stalls and boxes filled significantly

just before the turn came on, and emptied significantly
after the last ENCORE had been given. The manager

tearfully acknowledged that Cousin Teresa was It. Stage
hands and supers and programme sellers acknowledged it to

one another without the least reservation. The name of
the REVUE dwindled to secondary importance, and vast

letters of electric blue blazoned the words "Cousin
Teresa" from the front of the great palace of pleasure.

And, of course, the magic of the famous refrain laid its
spell all over the Metropolis. Restaurant proprietors

were obliged to provide the members of their orchestras
with painted wooden dogs on wheels, in order that the

much-demanded and always conceded melody should be
rendered with the necessary spectacular effects, and the

crash of bottles and forks on the tables at the mention
of the big borzoi usually drowned the sincerest efforts

of drum or cymbals. Nowhere and at no time could one get
away from the double thump that brought up the rear of

the refrain; revellers reeling home at night banged it on
doors and hoardings, milkmen clashed their cans to its

cadence, messenger boys hit smaller messenger boys
resounding double smacks on the same principle. And the

more thoughtful circles of the great city were not deaf
to the claims and significance of the popular melody. An

enterprising and emancipated preacher discoursed from his
pulpit on the inner meaning of "Cousin Teresa," and Lucas

Harrowcluff was invited to lecture on the subject of his
great achievement to members of the Young Mens' Endeavour

League, the Nine Arts Club, and other learned and
willing-to-learn bodies. In Society it seemed to be the

one thing people really cared to talk about; men and
women of middle age and average education might be seen

together in corners earnestly discussing, not the
question whether Servia should have an outlet on the

Adriatic, or the possibilities of a British success in
international polo contests, but the more absorbing topic

of the problematic Aztec or Nilotic origin of the Teresa
MOTIV.

"Politics and patriotism are so boring and so out of
date," said a revered lady who had some pretensions to

oracular utterance; "we are too cosmopolitan nowadays to
be really moved by them. That is why one welcomes an

intelligible production like 'Cousin Teresa,' that has a
genuine message for one. One can't understand the

message all at once, of course, but one felt from the
very first that it was there. I've been to see it

eighteen times and I'm going again to-morrow and on
Thursday. One can't see it often enough."

* * * *
"It would be rather a popular move if we gave this

Harrowcluff person a knighthood or something of the
sort," said the Minister reflectively.

"Which Harrowcluff?"asked his secretary.
"Which? There is only one, isn't there?" said the

Minister; "the 'Cousin Teresa' man, of course. I think
every one would be pleased if we knighted him. Yes, you

can put him down on the list of certainties - under the
letter L."

"The letter L," said the secretary, who was new to
his job; "does that stand for Liberalism or liberality?"

Most of the recipients of Ministerial favour were
expected to qualify in both of those subjects.

"Literature," explained the Minister.
And thus, after a fashion, Colonel Harrowcluff's

expectation of seeing his son's name in the list of
Honours was gratified.

THE YARKAND MANNER
SIR LULWORTH QUAYNE was making a leisurely progress

through the Zoological Society's Gardens in company with
his nephew, recently returned from Mexico. The latter

was interested in comparing and contrasting allied types
of animals occurring in the North American and Old World

fauna.
"One of the most remarkable things in the wanderings

of species," he observed, "is the sudden impulse to trek
and migrate that breaks out now and again, for no

apparent reason, in communities of hitherto stay-at-home
animals."

"In human affairs the same phenomenon is
occasionally noticeable," said Sir Lulworth; "perhaps the

most strikinginstance of it occurred in this country
while you were away in the wilds of Mexico. I mean the

wander fever which suddenly displayed itself in the
managing and editorial staffs of certain London

newspapers. It began with the stampede of the entire
staff of one of our most brilliant and enterprising

weeklies to the banks of the Seine and the heights of
Montmartre. The migration was a brief one, but it

heralded an era of restlessness in the Press world which
lent quite a new meaning to the phrase 'newspaper

circulation.' Other editorial staffs were not slow to
imitate the example that had been set them. Paris soon

dropped out of fashion as being too near home; Nurnberg,
Seville, and Salonica became more favoured as planting-

out grounds for the personnel of not only weekly but
daily papers as well. The localities were perhaps not

always well chosen; the fact of a leading organ of
Evangelical thought being edited for two successive

fortnights from Trouville and Monte Carlo was generally
admitted to have been a mistake. And even when

enterprising and adventurous editors took themselves and
their staffs further afield there were some unavoidable