n all you've got to do is to do it--see?"

So, acting on his instructions, young Bansted Downs went to the office
and sat quite still day after day for a month or two, with his eyes
fixed on space; and one afternoon at the end of that time he got up and
rushed at Power junior (who took charge of him in these preliminary
studies), and announced that he felt the irresistible impulse to do
something great and wonderful.

"What sort of thing?" asked the Junior Genius.

"I don't know--anything--something stupendous and transcendent--a
master-piece!" said young Bansted Downs.

"Knock it off, then. Don't make a labour of it, mind; that would spoil
all the genius of it. Just knock it off--shed it--see?"

The apprentice went back to his stool in the corner and knocked off that
scintillation of genius.

"Very good for a beginner," said the Junior Genius; "you show much
promise. I shall soon be able to hand you over to my father for the
Higher Grades."

And some time after that young Bansted Downs moved into the room of the
Master Genius to learn the higher attributes of genius--eccentricity and
obscureness. These were the most important parts of the qualifications,
and he worked hard at acquiring them. The eccentricity had infinite
ramifications extending into language, manner, dress, habits,
appearance, and opinions. The teacher communicated a thousand little
touches of eccentricity invaluable to a genius--such as the bringing out
of a book of poems with the title printed upside down and the capitals
at the end of the lines instead of the beginning; the wearing of the
back hair tied in a bow under the tip of the nose, and so forth. The
pupil learned to hop backwards on to a public platform, wearing his
dress-coat upside down, to paint his figures with their bones outside
their skin, to sob audibly when performing on the piano; and many other
things necessary to the obtaining of his degrees.

[Illustration: "A HOUSE-PAINTER IS A SPECIMEN OF GENIUS."]

Having completed these studies, he was ready for the uphill work of
trying to Make his Mark; and he found it a complicated bit of drawing
too, far worse than the signature of a Chinese emperor--everything lay
in the flourish.

The Master Genius said that no one could Make his Mark without a great
flourish; and the best way to make the flourish was to blow it on his
own trumpet; so there was the expense of a trumpet.

But he didn't seem able to get on; and after he had w