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nounced that he felt the irresistible impulse to do something great and wonderful.

"A house-painter is a specimen of genius."

"What sort of thing?" asked the Junior Genius.

"I don't know—anything—something stupendous and transcendent—a master-piece!" said young Bansted Downs.

"Knock it off, then. Don't make a labour of it, mind; that would spoil all the genius of it. Just knock it off—shed it—see?"

The apprentice went back to his stool in the corner and knocked off that scintillation of genius.

"Very good for a beginner," said the Junior Genius; "you show much promise. I shall soon be able to hand you over to my father for the Higher Grades."

And some time after that young Bansted Downs moved into the room of the Master Genius to learn the higher attributes of genius—eccentricity and obscureness. These were the most important parts of the qualifications, and he worked hard at acquiring them. The eccentricity had infinite ramifications extending into language, manner, dress, habits, appearance, and opinions. The teacher communicated a thousand little touches of eccentricity invaluable to a genius—such as the bringing out of a book of poems with the title printed upside down and the capitals at the end of the lines instead of the beginning; the wearing of the back hair tied in a bow under the tip of the nose, and so forth. The pupil learned to hop backwards on to a public platform, wearing his dress-coat upside down, to paint his figures with their bones outside their skin, to sob audibly when performing on the piano; and many other things necessary to the obtaining of his degrees.

"To sob audibly when performing on the piano."

Having completed these studies, he was ready for the uphill work of trying to Make his Mark; and he found it a complicated bit of drawing too, far worse than the signature of a Chinese emperor—everything lay in the flourish. The

Master Genius said that no one could Make his Mark without a great flourish; and the best way to make the flourish was to blow it on his own trumpet; so there was the expense of a trumpet.

But he didn't seem able to get on; and after he had worn out a gross of pens in the attempt to Make his Mark he felt that he would never obtain his degrees, and took a back cistern-cupboard under the roof in a poor street, and fell into a low state.

One day, as he was eating his weekly sausage at the Three Melancholy Geniuses, off Fleet Street, there entered a party whom he knew slightly and who had Made his Mark and passed all his degrees some time before.