oned it with casual anticipatory remarks
who had never previously been known to mention any novel later than
_John Halifax Gentleman_.

This and other similar pleasing phenomena were, of course, due in part
to the mercantile sagacity of Mr. Onions Winter. For during a
considerable period the Anglo-Saxon race was not permitted to forget for
a single day that at a given moment the balloon would burst and rain
down copies of _A Question of Cubits_ upon a thirsty earth. _A Question
of Cubits_ became the universal question, the question of questions,
transcending in its insistence the liver question, the soap question,
the Encyclopaedia question, the whisky question, the cigarette question,
the patent food question, the bicycle tyre question, and even the
formidable uric acid question. Another powerful factor in the case was
undoubtedly the lengthy paragraph concerning Henry's adventure at the
Alhambra. That paragraph, having crystallized itself into a fixed form
under the title 'A Novelist in a Box,' had started on a journey round
the press of the entire world, and was making a pace which would have
left Jules Verne's hero out of sight in twenty-four hours. No editor
could deny his hospitality to it. From the New York dailies it travelled
via the _Chicago Inter-Ocean_ to the _Montreal Star_, and thence back
again with the rapidity of light by way of the _Boston Transcript_, the
_Philadelphia Ledger_, and the _Washington Post_, down to the _New
Orleans Picayune_. Another day, and it was in the _San Francisco Call_,
and soon afterwards it had reached _La Prensa_ at Buenos Ayres. It then
disappeared for a period amid the Pacific Isles, and was next heard of
in the _Sydney Bulletin_, the _Brisbane Courier_ and the _Melbourne
Argus_. A moment, and it blazed in the _North China Herald_, and was
shooting across India through the columns of the Calcutta _Englishman_
and the _Allahabad Pioneer_. It arrived in Paris as fresh as a new pin,
and gained acceptance by the Paris edition of the _New York Herald_,
which had printed it two months before and forgotten it, as a brand-new
item of the most luscious personal gossip. Thence, later, it had a
smooth passage to London, and was seen everywhere with a new
frontispiece consisting of the words: 'Our readers may remember.' Mr.
Onions Winter reckoned that it had been worth at least five hundred
pounds to him.

But there was something that counted more than the paragraph, and more
than Mr.