"The Wenuses are able to paralyse all but strong-minded women
with their deadly Tea-Tray. Also they burn a Red Weed, the
smoke of which has smothered our troops in Westbourne Grove. No
sooner have they despoiled Whiteley's than they will advance
upon Jay's and Marshall and Snelgrove's. It is impossible to
stop them. There is no safety from the Tea-Tray and the Red
Weed but in instant flight."

That night the world was again lit by a pale pink flash of light. It was
the Fifth Crinoline.




IV.

WRECKAGE.


The general stampede that ensued on the publication of my wife's
despatch is no fit subject for the pen of a coherent scientific writer.
Suffice it to say, that in the space of twenty-four hours London was
practically empty, with the exception of the freaks at Barnum's, the
staff of _The Undertakers' Gazette_, and Mrs. Elphinstone (for that,
_pace_ Wilkie Collins, was the name of the Woman in White), who would
listen to no reasoning, but kept calling upon "George," for that was the
name of my cousin's man, who had been in the service of Lord Garrick,
the Chief Justice, who had succumbed to dipsomania in the previous
invasion.