City, but is, so to speak, more Manchesterian or Liverpoolian, with the immense advantage of being remarkably clean, curiously quiet, and in a pure and fresh atmosphere. I don't clearly understand what M. VESQUIER's business is, but as he seems to take for granted that I know all about it, I trust to getting DAUBINET alone and obtaining definite information from him. Are they VESQUIER's caves we are going to see? "No," DAUBINET tells me presently, quite surprised, at my ignorance; "we are going to see les caves de Popperie—Popp & Co., only Co.'s out of it, and it's all POPP now."

"Now then, Gentlemen," says the gérant of POPP & Co, "here's a voiture. We have twenty minutes' drive." The Popp-Manager points out to me all the interesting features of the country. DAUBINET amuses himself by sitting on the box and talking to the coachman.

"It excites me," he explains, when requested to take a back seat inside—though, by the way, it is in no sense DAUBINET's métier to "take a back seat,"—"it excites me—it amuses me to talk to a cocher. On ne peut pas causer avec un vrai cocher tous les jours." And presently we see them gesticulating to each other and talking both at once, DAUBINET, of course, is speaking English and various other languages, but as little French as possible, to the evident bewilderment of the driver. DAUBINET is perfectly happy. "Petzikoff! Blass the Prince of WAILES!" I hear him bursting out occasionally. Whereat the coachman smiles knowingly, and flicks the horses.

THE TWO WINDS.

(A Fairy Story for the Season of 1891. Imitated—at a distance—from Hans Andersen's celebrated Tale of "The Four Winds.")

The Mother of the Winds (acting as locum tenens for her Clerk of the Weather, who, sick of his own unseasonable work, was off to spend his annual holiday with Mr. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON in the Pacific Isles), received the desperately damp, dishevelled, blown-about, and almost heart-broken Princess AGRICULTURA at the door of the Cave.

"Oh, here you are again!" she cried, "once more in the Cavern of the Winds! And this time you have brought two of my sons with you, I see," she added, pointing to the South Wind and the West Wind, who were blowing away at the Princess like bellowsy blends of Blizzards, Cloud-bursts, Tornadoes and Tritons.

"Oh, do for pity's sake, stop them!" cried AGRICULTURA, struggling hard to keep herself and her garments together. "It seems as though the heavens have become one vast sluice, that keeps pouring down water, as my predecessor, the Prince, put it. I have not a dry thread about me. Please put them in their Bags—do—whilst I have a little talk with you about them, and the mischief they have been doing."

Two prolonged chuckles, a deep stentorian one and a sharp staccato one, came from the two Bags already hanging to the wall of the Cavern, from whence subsequently protruded the round ruddy form of the North and the pinched figure of the East Wind. "Ho! ho! ho!" chortled the North Wind, chokingly. "Who says I do all the damage?"

"He! he! he!" sniggered the East Wind, raspingly. "Who is the pickle and spoil-sport now, I should like to know?"

"Shut up!" said the Mother of the Winds, sharply. "And as to you two," she added, turning to the South and West Winds, "if you don't stand still and give an account of yourselves, I'll pop you into your respective Bags in the twinkling of a hundred-ton gun!"

"Why, who is she, that she should call us over the clouds?" cried the two Winds, stopping their blowing a bit, and pointing to the Princess.

"She is my guest," said the old woman; "and if that does not satisfy you, you need only get into the Bags. Do you understand me now?"

Well, this did the business at once; and the two Winds, in a breath, began to relate whence they came, and what they had been doing for nearly three months past.

"We have been spoiling the English Summer," they said.

"That's nothing new," muttered the Mother of the Winds.

"Isn't it, though—in the way we've done it?" cried the two, triumphantly. "Why, those two Boys over yonder, uniting their flatulent forces, could not have done better—or worse. Ho! ho! ho! They made last winter a frozen Sahara. We've made the present summer a squashy Swamp! The winter was as dry as the dust of RAMESES. The summer has been as wet as old St. Swithin's gingham. We soaked June, we drenched July, and we drowned August. We squelched the strawberry season, reducing tons of promising fruit to flavourless pulp, and the growers to damp despair. Whooosh!! What a wetting we gave 'em!!! As soon as the Cricket Season started, so did we! Didn't we just? We simply sopped all the wickets, and spoilt all the matches, either keeping the cricketers waiting in the pavilion or slipping about on sloppy slithery turf. Consequently, the Cricketing Season has been a sickening sell. We 'watered down' the 'averages' of all the 'cracks.' S.W. was too many for W.G. (GRACE, of Gloucester), and W.W. gave the other W.W. (READ, of Surrey) a fair doing! We followed 'The Leviathan' in particular about persistently, till he must be real glad to 'take his hook' to Australia. Wherever he was playing, from Kennington to Clifton, we combined our forces, swooped down on him, and simply washed him out!"

"Wanton wags!" said the Mother of the Winds, reproachfully.

"Ra-ther," yelled her promising offspring in chorus. "But that's not all, is it, S.W.?—is it W.W.? We mucked up Lawn Tennis, soaked Henley Regatta, nearly spoilt the German EMPEROR's visit, ruined all the al fresco functions of the Season—slap!—flooded Society out of London, only to deluge them in their flitting till they wished they were back again, intensified the Influenza Epidemic, and—"

"Oh! stop, stop!" moaned the Old Woman. "Those Boys yonder will burst—with jealousy. But what have you been doing to the Princess AGRICULTURA here?"

The two broke into a spasmodic duo of delight and disdain. "Why look at her?" they cried. "Doesn't she speak for herself?"

"I do," replied AGRICULTURA. "And I charge this pair of Pernicious Pickles with planning—and to a large extent effecting—my Destruction! Hay, Hops, Cereals, Root-Crops, Fruits and Flowers—all ruined by these roystering rascals. They've done more incurable mischief in three supposed-to-be Summer Months than those much-maligned Boys over yonder did all the Winter. They've had it all their own way the Season through, ay, as much as though they'd nailed the weathercock to S.W., and knocked out the bottom of Aquarius's water-pot. And I call upon you, O Mother of the Winds, to pop them at once into their respective Bags, sit upon them till they are choked silent and still, and then hang them up to dry—if dry such watery imps can—for at least six months to come!"

Now whether the Mother of the Winds gave ear to the prayer of the poor Princess AGRICULTURA, and imposed upon the Two Winds the punishment they richly deserved, the sequel must show.

SIGNS OF BREEDING.

(Vide Correspondence in the "Daily Telegraph.")
Little Binks agrees with Lord Byron that Breeding shews itself in the Hands, and complacently surveys his own.
"BOSH!"