tendency of one and all of the other six children to clamour for their
turn with the book and the cane. The reason, I am sure, that journalism
is so popular a calling, in spite of its many drawbacks, is this: each
journalist feels he is the boy walking up and down with the cane. The
Government, the Classes, and the Masses, Society, Art, and Literature,
are the other children sitting on the doorstep. He instructs and
improves them.

But I digress. It was to excuse my present permanent disinclination to
be the vehicle of useful information that I recalled these matters. Let
us now return.

Somebody, signing himself "Balloonist," had written to ask concerning the
manufacture of hydrogen gas. It is an easy thing to manufacture--at
least, so I gathered after reading up the subject at the British Museum;
yet I did warn "Balloonist," whoever he might be, to take all necessary
precaution against accident. What more could I have done? Ten days
afterwards a florid-faced lady called at the office, leading by the hand
what, she explained, was her son, aged twelve. The boy's face was
unimpressive to a degree positively remarkable. His mother pushed him
forward and took off his hat, and then I perceived the reason for this.
He had no eyebrows whatever, and of his hair nothing remained but a
scrubby dust, giving to his head the appearance of a hard-boiled egg,
skinned and sprinkled with black pepper.

"That was a handsome lad this time last week, with naturally curly hair,"
remarked the lady. She spoke with a rising inflection, suggestive of the
beginning of things.

"What has happened to him?" asked our chief.