Oh, my best one! Such a simply _sumptuous_ storyette for you! Even in _your_ remote fastnesses you must have heard of young Ivan Rowdidowsky, the very _very_ latest thing in Russian composer-pianists. Playing the piano with his elbows, dressed in scarlet velvet, and fuller of "inner meanings" than anyone (even from _Russia_) ever was before, he captured London at the beginning of the Little Season, and his vogue has been _colossal_. He gave twelve elbow-recitals of his own compositions at Emperor's Hall. Those fearsome interviewers fairly mobbed him, and he told them, in the _prettiest_ broken English, that "piano playing with the hands suited well enough the pale-blooded law-abiding people of yesterday, but that the full-pulsing stormy emotions of to-day could only be adequately expressed by the _elbows_!" Quite _myriads_ of people made him write, "Your affectionate friend, Ivan Rowdidowsky," in their autograph-books, till at last he had cramp in the hand and Sir William Kiddem had to be called in. There were reassuring bulletins telling the public that they needn't be alarmed about their favourite, as cramp in the band is _rarely_ fatal and does _not_ affect the elbows, and that, if M. Rowdidowsky stopped writing in autograph-books for a day or two, he'd be quite his wonderful self again. Popsy, Lady Ramsgate, has been _folle de lui_ from the first, and at Easter she'd a big party for him down at "Popsy's Pleasaunce," her place in Sussex, and then and there announced that she was engaged to him, and that after her marriage she would drop the Ramsgate title and be known by "her Ivan's beautiful Slavonic name!" People were very nice to her about it and didn't laugh more than they could help, and all went cheerily, Rowdidowsky in his scarlet velvet playing to them with his elbows every evening; and then one fatal morning (as novelists say) Popsy picked up a letter that her Ivan had dropped from his pocket. It was addressed outside to "M. Rowdidowsky," and this is an extract from what she read _inside_: "I was at your show at Emperor's Hall the other day and thought I should have split my skin at the way the silly jossers all round me were carrying on, and at the thought that it was my pal, good old Bert Smith of Camberwell, perched up on the platform in red velvet togs pounding away on the old piano with his elbows like a good 'un. I put my hands over my face to prevent myself from bursting out, and the woman next to me shoved a silver bottle under my nose and gurgled into my ear, 'You've an artist-soul! I felt just as you do when I first heard this divine Rowdidowsky!' The silly geeser! Go it, old son! More power to your _elbows_! And don't forget, when you've made your pile, that your old pal, Joe, was part-author of the idea and helped you to work it out!"