"Only three words," answered George evasively. He hesitated. "But there, Emeline never did know how to express herself."
"George," I demanded sternly, "what were those three words?"
"A Thank Offering," said George.
GLEANINGS FROM GRUB STREET.
(By our Special Parasite.)
A brilliant reception is being prepared for Professor Hjalmar Stormbarner, the Finnish novelist, on the occasion of his first visit to England in June. An address of welcome, composed by Mr. C. K. Shorter and Sir Robertson Nicoll, with lyrics by Mr. Max Pemberton and Lord Burnham, will be presented to him at the Grafton Gallery, and Dr. Clifford is arranging what he happily calls a "pious orgy of congratulation" at the Caxton Hall, at which Sir Alfred Mond, Baron de Forest, and Mr. Thornton, the new manager of the Great Eastern Railway, will deliver addresses. A demonstration in Hyde Park in honour of our guest is also being organised by his English publishers, Messrs. Dodder and Dodder, at which their principal authors will speak at thirteen different platforms, and a resolution will be simultaneously moved by blast of trumpet that Professor Stormbarner is the greatest novelist in the world.
Professor Stormbarner is of course best known in this country as the author of the famous romances, Letters from Limbo, The Devil's Ducats, Narcotic Nelly and The Sarcophagus, but his versatility and accomplishments in other departments of mental activity will come as a surprise to his English admirers. He has penetrated the Arctic circle in a bath-chair drawn by reindeer; he plays with great skill on the balalaika, and he has translated most of the works of Mr. Edmund Gosse into Mæso-Gothic. At the present moment he is undoubtedly the first favourite for the Nobel Prize, though Willie Ferrero runs him close in virtue of the patronage of Mr. Andrew Carnegie and the Dowager-Empress of Russia.
Perhaps the finest and most convincing tribute to the overwhelming genius of the great Finnish romancer is the quatrain recently written in his honour by Mr. Edmund Gosse:—