elegraph._

Our impersonation of a nasty sore throat "off" is still the talk of China.

* * * * *

ONE WAY WITH THEM.

Leeson is the best of living creatures (as so many of us are), but he has
one detestable foible--he always wants to read something aloud. Now,
reading aloud is a very special gift. Few men have it, and even of those
few there are some who do not force it upon their friends; the rest have it
not, and Leeson is of the rest.

In fact, it is really painful to listen to him, because he not only reads,
but acts. If it is a woman speaking, he pipes a falsetto such as no woman
outside a reciter's brain ever possessed. If it is a rustic, he affects a
dialect from no known district. In emotional passages one does not dare to
look at him at all, but we all cower with our heads in our hands, as though
we were convicted but penitent criminals. So much for dramatic or dialogue
pieces. When it comes to lyric poetry--his favourite form of
literature--Leeson sings, or rather cantillates, swaying his body to the
rhythm of the lines. If any of the poets could hear him they would become
'bus-conductors at once; it is as bad as that.

Otherwise Leeson is excellent company and one likes dining with him. But
there's always hanging over one the dread that he may have alighted on
something new and wonderful, and at any moment....

Directly I entered the house last week I was conscious that this had
happened--Leeson had made another discovery. I had not been in the
drawing-room for more than a minute, and had barely shaken hands with Mrs.
Leeson, when he pulled from his pocket a thin book. I knew the worst at
once: it had about it all the stigmata of new poetry. It was of the right
deadly hue, the right deadly size, the right deadly roughness about the
edges.

"I've got something here, my boy," he said. "The real stuff. Let me----"

Just at this moment the door opened and some guests entered.

"Never mind," he remarked to me, as he approached to welcome them; "later.
It's wonderful--wonderful!"

Other guests arriving occupied him, and then a servant came in to say that
he was wanted on the telephone.

He returned with the message that Captain Cathcart was sorry to say he
could not possibly be there until a quarter-past eight. But please don't
wait.

It was now five minutes past eight.

"What I suggest," said Leeson, "is that we do wait, and that we fill up the
time by reading one o