FOOTNOTES:

Who hung with woods yon mountain's sultry brow?

rather too sumptuously covers the planting of a "long shady walk, of nearly a mile and a half ... called Kyrle's Walks, on the summit of the eminence commanding a beautiful prospect of the Wye." The poet's next query:—

From the dry rock who bade the waters flow?

is answered thus: "The Man of Ross promoted, and partly assisted by his own pecuniary aid, the erection of a small water work near the river Wye, which supplied the town of Ross with water, in which article it was very deficientbefore," A further commentary was drawn from Mr. Hutcheson by the couplet:—

Behold the market-place with poor o'erspread!The Man of Ross divides the weekly bread.

"He kept open house every market-day; any person without distinction might meet on that day at his hospitable board, which, according to the stories related to me by some old tenants, consisted of a joint of meat of each sort. The poor, who were always in waiting on that day, and every other, had distributed to them, by his own superintendence, the whole of the remains of each day, besides continual distributions of bread, etc."

As to Pope's question:—

Whose causeway parts the vale with shady rows?

it seems that the poet was desperately out. The causeway connecting the town with the river dated from before the fourteenth century, but Kyrle probably saw to its proper maintenance.

Finally, let us see what the Sage of Fleet Street has to say to the statement:—

The Man possest—five hundred pounds a year,

and its implication that everything was done on that sum. In the critical notice of Pope in "The Lives of the Poets," Dr. Johnson remarks: "Wonders are willingly told and willinglyheard. The truth is, that Kyrle was a man of known integrity and active benevolence, by whose solicitation the wealthy were persuaded to pay contributions to his charitable schemes; this influence he obtained by an example of liberality exerted to the utmost extent of his power, and was thus enabled to give more than he had. This account Mr. Victor received from the Minister of the place, and I have preserved it, that the praise of a good man being made more credible, may be more solid. Narrations of romantic and impracticable virtue will be read with wonder, but that which is unattainable is recommended in vain; that good may be endeavoured, it must be shown to be practicable."

So much for all the advocates—angeli and diaboli! But I think we need pay little attention to Mr. Gibson's testimony. Even though he were in part right, and a tinge of self-esteem or love of applause crept into the Man's benefactions, they remain benefactions no less, costing him as much money, and reaching the same goals. But away with such belittlings! Let us rather remember that the Rev. Matthew Gibson was crazed, stingy withal, and had no child by his wife. Personally I agree with my friend Mr. A. L. Humphreys, who has put it on record that, in his belief, it would be a good thing if every parish had a Man of Ross in preferenceto a parson. No harm necessarily in a parson as well, but the Man is more important.

At least one more poetical tribute from genius did John Kyrle win. Among theJuvenile Poemsof Samuel Taylor Coleridge is this:—

Lines written at the King's Arms, Ross, formerly the house of the "Man of Ross."

Richer than Miser o'er his countless hoards,Nobler than Kings, or king-polluted Lords,Here dwelt the Man of Ross! O, Traveller, hear!Departed Merit claims a reverent tear.Friend to the friendless, to the sick man health,With generous joy he viewed his modest wealth;He heard the widow's heaven-breathed prayer of praise,He marked the sheltered orphan's tearful gaze,Or where the sorrow-shrivelled captive lay,Poured the bright blaze of Freedom's noon-tide ray.Beneath this roof if thy cheered moments pass,Fill to the good man's name one grateful glass:To higher zest shall Memory wake thy soul,And Virtue mingle in the ennobled bowl.But if, like me, through life's distressful sceneLonely and sad thy pilgrimage hath been;And if thy breast with heart-sick anguish fraught,Thou journeyest onward tempest-tossed in thought;Here cheat thy cares! in generous visions melt,And dream of goodness thou hast never felt!

The sad and lonely poet, tempest-tossed in thought, who wrote those lines, was then twenty-one,on a walking tour with his friend Hucks, trying to construct Pantisocracy and forget Mary Evans.

For one "of little or no literature" the Man of Ross did not do so badly.

But there was even more honour to come. When, in 1876, the late Miranda Hill addressed a public letter to "Those who love Beautiful Things," and called upon her readers to help in getting more sweetness and light into the homes of the poor, and particularly the poor of London, the response took the form of a Society to which the name of John Kyrle was (at the suggestion of Mr. Benjamin Nattalie) given: the Kyrle Society. During its many years of activity, the Kyrle Society has done much to realise the idealism of its founders—for with Miranda Hill was associated her sister, the late Octavia Hill, that indomitable fighter for all that is good and ameliorative in life, whom, in her serene old age, a symphony in grey and silver, I used often to see walking on that height above Crockham Hill which her energies acquired for the nation as an open space for ever. In a speech which she made at one of the meetings of the Kyrle Society not long before her death, Octavia Hill thus summed up certain of the needs which that excellent organisation strove to supply. "Men, women, andchildren," she said, "want more than food, shelter, and warmth. They want, if their lives are to be full and good, space near their homes for exercise, quiet, good air, and sight of grass, trees, and flowers; they want colour, which shall cheer them in the midst of smoke and fog; they want music, which shall contrast with the rattle of the motors and lift their hearts to praise and joy; they want suggestion of nobler and better things than those that surround them day by day.... I assure you that I believe these things have more influence on the spirit than we are at all accustomed to remember. They cultivate a sense of dignity and self-respect, as well as breaking the monotony of life."

These things has the Kyrle Society dispensed and will continue to dispense, among its countless and noble activities; and it is pleasant to think that that stolid old Man of Ross, in this new incarnation, has become so imaginatively sympathetic. How little can he ever have thought of this transmutation of his kindly busy-bodydom into something so fine and rare! But it was a true instinct which set his ancient name on the modern banner; and if ever a new motto is called for, the merits of "Od's bud, Od's bud, but I will mend you!" should be considered.

LAURA COMBINES BREAKFAST AND PHILANTHROPY. See "The Innocent's Progress"—Plate 3LAURA COMBINES BREAKFAST AND PHILANTHROPY.See "The Innocent's Progress"—Plate 3

FOOTNOTES:[1]In the Parish Register.

[1]In the Parish Register.

One thing leads to another, and had I not entered Mr. Simmonds' old curiosity shop in Monmouth to make inquiries about the Man of Ross's arm-chair, which nearly fills the window, I might never have met with "The Elegant Girl," and "The Elegant Girl" is one of the comeliest books I ever coveted.

Having asked all my questions about the chair, which has much of the stern solidity of a fortress, I went upstairs and immediately was rejoiced by the sight of one of the engravings (Plate 2) which are reproduced in this volume. It was one, said Mr. Simmonds, of a series, and he showed me eight others—nine in all—each with its moral verses underneath—and I was enchanted, so delicate is the colouring and so distinguished the design, so naïve the educational method and so easy the triumph. The reproductions here are absurdly small—the size of the originals is 9-1/2 inches wide by 6 high—but though they give nothing of the tinting they retain something of the spirit, and the very striking composition is unimpaired by reduction.

Mr. Simmonds thought nine a complete set, but I felt that an even number was more probable, and, in time, was proved to be right; but it was long before I could obtain sight of the other three and discover that they belonged to a book and had been taken from their binding to decorate a nursery's walls. There are excitements in this form of hunt—la chasse au bouquin—commensurate with those that accelerate the pulses of wearers of pink coats, and some were mine as the scent grew hot and hotter. My first coverts were the print shops, but they were blank; then I drew the famous Bloomsbury spinneys, both the Reading Room and the Print Room, but they were blank too; and then, tally ho! away to the South Kensington gorse. It was here I had the luck to ascertain—through a reference to Tuer's "Pages and Pictures"—that "The Elegant Girl" was a book; and forthwith I turned to my friends the booksellers, and in High Street, Marylebone, got directly on the trail, which took me to Hampstead, where a copy of the work (the only one of which I have yet heard) was run to earth. It is this copy that now lies before me—the property of Mr. C. T. Owen, a famous collector of what the trade calls "juveniles," who has very kindly permitted the plates to be photographed for the present volume.

Mr. Simmonds thought the drawings the work of Adam Buck, an artist of child life, who has lately been the mode; but London experts differ. No doubt (they say) Buck's influence is apparent, but no more. The only name is that of Alais, the engraver, on the title-page, and I do not find that Alais ever worked for Buck, but there are at South Kensington child scenes by Singleton engraved by him. "The Elegant Girl" may be Singleton's. Equally may the designs be by a foreigner, for there is a distinctly foreign suggestion here and there, notably in the furniture. The plates are not aquatints but were coloured by hand: the extreme scarcity of the volume probably being due to this circumstance, only a small edition having been prepared and that, I should imagine, at a high figure. To-day, of course, the value of the book is vastly higher.

All, or very nearly all, the old-fashioned writers for children had but one purpose animating their breasts; and that purpose was to make children better. I don't say that to-day we try to make them worse; but their naughtiness can amuse us, as apparently it never could our ancestors, and wild flowers can be preferred to the products of the formal parterre. Even Miss Edgeworth came out nominally as "The Parents' Assistant," although her native kindlinessand sense of narrative were too much for her; and even she thought of the child too much as plastic material. Children as children excited little interest; but a child as a progressive moral animal, susceptible of moulding, a potential adult and citizen, was worth making books for, if in return it was responsive and mended its ways. There were of course a few books for the young which told an honest story—Charles and Mary Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare" and "Mrs. Leicester's School" are early and shining examples—but the idea of amusement for amusement's sake was rare. And nonsense for the young, which later was to become a cult, did not exist before Edward Lear. Nothing can, of course, happen out of its time, and therefore the speculation is idle; but none the less it would be entertaining to visualise the effect of "Alice in Wonderland" on the little Fairchilds. What would Mr. Fairchild say to it? The work of a clergyman, too! Would not he return with renewed relish to the congenial task of repeating to his brood Biblical verses illustrating the wickedness of man's heart?

(Incidentally—but this is not the place, for "The Elegant Girl" is waiting—there are some interesting reflections to be recorded on the circumstance that the entertainment of the young has never been in such willing and safe handsas those of the celibates. All the writers I have just glanced at (save Mrs. Sherwood) were unmarried. This need not be taken as any aspersion upon matrimony—there must be marriage and giving in marriage in order that little readers may exist—but it ought to be remembered whenever the single state is under criticism. Think of the injustice of the foreshadowed Bachelor Tax falling upon Lewis Carroll!)

"The Elegant Girl," the date of which is 1813, sets out to improve too, for this is the title: "The Elegant Girl, or Virtuous Principles the True Source of Elegant Manners"; but its lessons are so unprejudiced and persuasive that no one can object. Moreover, a very exceptional artistic talent was employed: the best available rather than the cheapest. With such attractive jam, who could resent the pill? Alone, the pictures do very little in the didactic way, but to the detached artist came an ally in the shape of a gentle—and probably, I think, female—bard. Each of the twelve drawings has a six-lined stanza to drive home the picture and inculcate a maxim of sound and refined behaviour.

In the first plate Laura (the elegant girl is, of course, named Laura) is seen in her little bedroom at her morning prayers, and, thus fortified, she then goes through the day in eleven episodes, all tending, as the Americans say, touplift. Washed and dressed, she joins, in Plate No. 2, her mother at early lessons in a charming library such as neither Vermeer nor Whistler would have disdained. According to the verses, Laura is careless of "what becomes her best," but to the casual male eye she seems to have chosen her trousers with no little discretion. Having sufficiently "explored the arts and sciences," she is, in Plate No. 3, ready for breakfast, again with her mother. Her father was—where? Possibly he was dead; possibly (the date is 1813) at the wars; probably still in bed. At any rate his daughter passes her day of edification entirely without his assistance.

Breakfast affords the opportunity of a lesson in practical philanthropy, for chance sends a beggar to the window, and Laura craves, and is granted, permission to give him food and drink. In Plate No. 4 she has a music lesson—a lesson that "is not thrown away," for

By Science taught with taste to play,She'll charm erewhile the listening throngAnd sing with modest grace her song.

In Plate No. 5, having slipped a red smock over her dress, but still retaining the captivating trousers, Laura practises painting. In No. 6, substituting a purple smock for the red one, she teaches the little villagers their A.B.C.—a form of altruistic employment which those

can best approveWho virtue and religion love.

In Plate No. 7, Laura, in yellow, acquires the rudiments of obedience and refrains from eating forbidden fruit. In Plate No. 8, in green, she carries food to an aged dame. In Plate No. 9, in blue, she brings a cup of broth to her mother, who, "languid and pale," reclines, like Madame Récamier, on an exceedingly uncomfortable couch. It is thus that Laura,

in early days,Maternal tenderness repays.

The chief difficulty of any series of this kind is, artists tell me, to preserve the likenesses throughout. In the case of "The Elegant Girl" it has been fairly successfully overcome, but Laura, who at her orisons looks years older than when becomingly trousered, is never again so charming a child as in the library before breakfast; while, in the Plate which we have now reached, her mother's severe Greek profile, so noticeable at that frugal meal, has completely vanished. But, take it all round, the series is maintained with credibility and a sprightly realism.

In Plate No. 10 the mother is sufficiently recovered to play the harp while Laura bounds light on agile feet. In No. 11 Laura visits theimpoverished sick, and, by reading the "sacred page,"

Dries up the widow's scalding tears,Exalts her hopes and calms her fears.

And finally, in crimson, she is presented by her mother with the guerdon of her day's good conduct, which consists of several boxes of odds and ends labelled "Gifts for the Poor," including a large number of top hats—

Gifts for the Poor her own Reward,For Laura felt and understoodThe Luxury of doing Good.

Such is the pretty, unobtrusive didactic scheme of "The Elegant Girl." That it is now all out of date I am only too well aware; but it would do no great harm if a reprint of the book found its way into a few modern homes.

My acquaintance among ferrymen is not extensive, but I cannot remember any that were cheerful. Perhaps there are none. The one over there at this moment, on the other side, for whom we are waiting and who is being so deliberate—he certainly has no air of gaiety.

There is a wealth of reasons for this lack of mirth. To begin with, a boat on a river is normally a vehicle of pleasure; but the ferryman's boat is a drudge. Then, the ordinary course of a boat on a river is up or down, between banks that can provide excitement, and around bends, each one of which may reveal adventure; but the ferryman's boat must constantly cross from side to side, always from the same spot to the same spot and back again, which is subversive of joy. All that the ferryman knows of the true purposes of a river he gains from observation of others, who gaily pass him, pulling with the stream or against it, and singing, perhaps, as they row. Did a ferryman ever sing? There was, when I was a boy, a pretty song about Twickenham Ferry,but my recollections of it are that it was the passenger who sang: not, I fancy, in the boat, but before he entered it. If my memory is right, the fact is significant. In the company of such taciturnity and gloom who could carol?

The ferryman, again, must never leave his post. All the world may go wayfaring, but not he. To cross a river is in itself nothing; but to come, from somewhere unknown, to the bank of the river, cross it, and pass on to unknown bournes on the other side—that is an enterprise, and that is what every one but the ferryman is doing. I have written elsewhere—it is a recurring theme of sympathy—of the servants of the traveller who live by helping him on his eventful way but never participate in any wanderings—railway porters, for example—and the ferryman is perhaps chief, because so much of the very matter of romance—a running stream—comes into his daily routine. There he is, in the open air, with the breeze to fan and lure him, and the racing clouds to lift his thoughts, and the exciting sound of water in his ears: all the enticements to rove, but he must not be a rover. For the rest of us (as it must seem to him), exploration; for himself, the narrow confines of the known!

And it is a peculiarity of ferrymen that when you want them they are (like this reluctantfellow) always on the other side. Not from any natural desire to annoy, but through a whim of the gods; yet to have to come over empty, how it must add fuel to their misanthropic fire! If every journey were with a fare the ferryman might be a shade more cheerful, even though the payment is so trifling. Was there ever a rich ferryman? Has a whimsical millionaire ever played at being a ferryman? Has a Carnegie ever left a ferryman a legacy?

And then the brevity of their companionships! Not that most ferrymen seem to desire human intercourse; but perhaps they did once, before the monotony of their task soured them. Down to the boat come the strangers from the great world—young or old, forbidding or beautiful, ardent or pensive—and howsoever the ferryman would like to hold them and talk with them, no sooner does the boat touch the farther bank than they are off again! Does not that make for a certain moroseness?

And what was the ferryman before he was a ferryman? For seldom, I should guess, is his an hereditary post. Some kind of failure normally precedes; and there again is cause for reticence.

Such friends as ferrymen possess are usually dumb animals. I have known more than one who carried his dog with him; and once, on theWye, I met one whose companion was a goose. No matter how often the crossing had to be made, the goose made it too. I used the ferry several times, and we were never without this escort; and the ferryman (who, I am bound to remark, humiliating though it be, propelled his boat from side to side, not with honest oars, but by means of a rope) emerged sufficiently from his apathy to praise the bird's fidelity. "Here," thought I, "is surely the material for a pertinent apologue. 'The Ferryman and the Goose': the very title is Æsopian. Or—to be more satirical—the title might be 'The Ferryman and the Swan,' the point being that he thought it was a swan, but in reality it was only a goose." But I had no further inspiration. And yet, by a practised homilist, a good deal could be done with it with which to score off poor human nature. "Ah! my friends"—surely it is fittest for the pulpit, after all—"ah! my friends may not each of us be as much in error as that poor deluded ferryman? Let us search our hearts and answer truthfully the questions: Do we know our friends as we ought? Does not their flattery perhaps blind us to their mediocrity? In short, are they swans or geese?"

Ferrymen——

But here is our man at last! On close inspection how dismal he looks!

LAURA'S MUSIC LESSON. See "The Innocent's Progress"—Plate 4LAURA'S MUSIC LESSON.See "The Innocent's Progress"—Plate 4

The decision that the governess-cart must be given up meant that a new owner for Polly must be found.

Polly is a roan pony; very round in the barrel, and particularly so of late, when there has been no food but meadow-grass. She had been with us (this is my neighbour's story, as told to me during the War: a very charming neighbour who keeps her temper at croquet)—Polly had been with us so long as to become, as ponies peculiarly can, a member of the family, so that to part with her savoured of treachery. Necessity, however, knows no law and sanctifies no memory, and the distasteful preparations were therefore begun. The first was the framing of the advertisement; which is not the simple matter that it might appear to be, because so much depends upon the choice of adjective: the selected word must both allure and (in our case) keep within the bounds of truth. What are the qualities most valued in a pony, we had to ask ourselves. Celerity? Polly wasfixed in her determination not to exceed the speed limit, at any rate on outward journeys. Willingness? Polly could be desperately stubborn. Strength? Yes, she was strong. Youth? Well, she came to us ten years ago and she was no foal then. After much serious deliberation, compared with which Versailles Conferences are mere exchanges of persiflage, it was decided to describe Polly either as "strong useful pony" or "useful strong pony." Further deliberations fixed the phrase as "Pony, strong, useful," and the advertisement was despatched to the local rag, as our very worthy county chronicle is too often called.

Next came the question of what price was to be asked. Here expert opinion was resorted to, in the shape of Mr. Edmead, the butcher. No one knows more about ponies than butchers do, and Mr. Edmead is exceptionally wise.

"Taking everything into consideration," he said, "I think that twenty-five pounds would be a fair price."

We clung to each other for support. Twenty-five pounds! And we had given only nine pounds all those years ago. Why had we not made pony-breeding a hobby? The War, Mr. Edmead went on to explain, had rendered ponies more valuable. Yes, taking everything into consideration, twenty-five pounds was a fairprice. We ought to get that. In fact, if he had been in need of a pony he would have given that himself; but just then he was well supplied, and Polly was, he feared, not quite fast enough for him. Good morning.

Men who want to buy a pony have a strong resemblance to each other. They are clean-shaven and wear hard round hats, and the collars of their overcoats are carelessly treated so that they are half up and half down. They carry sticks. Also, although they want a pony, they don't want one at quite such a figure. All the men who came to see Polly were furthermore alike in agreeing that she was no doubt a useful strong pony, even a strong useful pony, but she was not for them. Day after day Polly was examined. They opened her mouth and shook their heads, they felt her knees and her hocks, they looked at her with narrow eyes from near by and from far, they rattled their sticks in their hard hats, they gave her sudden cuts and prods. But they didn't buy.

We began to get desperate. Much as we esteemed Polly, now that she was to be sold we wanted to be rid of her. Things should be done quickly. And then came a market gardener, a large, rubicund, genial man named Fox. And Polly was again led forth and again subjected to every test known to pony-buyers. Allwas going well, and would have gone well, but for Vivian.

Who, you ask, is Vivian? We should be better prepared for the irruption of new characters. True, but this is not my story, but my nice neighbour's.

Vivian is a small boy who had known Polly all his life, and who by some mischance wandered out from his lessons in the morning-room at the precise moment when Mr. Fox, who obviously was attracted by Polly, was making up his mind to pay the full money. Vivian, I should explain, is one of those ingratiating little boys who look upon the world as a sphere existing solely to provide them with friends, and who attach themselves with the strongest bands to open-air manual labourers. No sooner did Vivian see Mr. Fox's benevolent features than he added him to his collection.

"Run away, Vivian," I said. "It's not play-time yet, and we're busy."

"Are you going to buy Polly?" Vivian asked Mr. Fox by way of a suitable rejoinder to my command.

"I was thinking about it," said Mr. Fox, adding to me, "How old do you call her, ma'am? She looks to me about twelve."

The figure was so low that I nodded assent, but Vivian spoilt it by exclaiming, "Oh, mother,and Mr. Brooks says she's seventeen if she's a day, and I'm sure she's a day."

Mr. Fox became thoughtful. "Mr. Brooks said that, did he?" he remarked.

I felt that I couldn't tell Vivian again to go in, because it would look as though I feared his frankness; which, to be candid, I did. All I could do was to hope for the best.

"She's quiet enough; used to traffic and all that?" Mr. Fox asked.

Then Vivian began to laugh. This trick of laughter over retrospection—chewing the cud of old jokes—we have always rather admired in him; his chuckles are very engaging; but now I trembled, and not without reason.

"Don't you remember, mother," he began, "that day when she was frightened by the traction engine and ran into the grocer's shop?"

Mr. Fox, in whose large hand my son's minute one was now reposing, looked grave.

"That's against her in my business," he said.

"Oh, but," I explained, "that was a very long time ago. She's quite steady now. Don't you remember, Vivian, it was on your fifth birthday?"

"No," said Vivian, "that was on my seventh birthday—something funny always happens on my birthdays," he explained to Mr. Fox—"it was on my fifth birthday that Polly fell down."

"She's been down, has she?" said Mr. Fox ominously.

The rest of it is too tragic. I had no intention of concealing anything; Mr. Edmead knew the pony's whole history when he valued her; but Vivian's presence made me nervous, painfully self-conscious; I felt my face burning and knew that I must suggest duplicity.

Mr. Fox, I will admit, played the game. He asked Vivian no questions; indeed he talked of other things than defective ponies; but I could see his mind working; I could see pound after pound dropping away from the grand total.

Well, that's the story. Mr. Fox led Polly away some ten minutes later, leaving in her stead a cheque. But it was not for twenty-five pounds—Vivian saw to that.

The moral? The moral is: when your husband is in Mesopotamia and the time comes to sell the pony, lock your cherubic son in the nursery.

To enter a strange town on foot and unencumbered—leaving one's bag at the station or sending it on in advance—is a prudent course, for it liberates the traveller to select his inn at his ease. A man carrying luggage is not free; the bag in a way pledges him, at any rate proclaims the fact that he is a traveller and will probably need a bed, and makes it the more difficult for him to extricate himself from the hostel that within doors has failed to come up to the promise of the exterior—as too often is the hostel's habit.

All unburdened, then, I entered Kingsbridge at lunch-time at the top of its steep main street, and as I walked down it I cast my glances this side and that to see which inn seemed most promising. The woman who, at Yealmpton, had given me some bread and cheese, had named the "Anchor" as the best. A man who had beaten me at billiards at Devonport had mentioned another; and, left to myself, I found myself more taken by the façade of a third.

I did, however, nothing rash; I looked carefullyat all, and then I entered the one with the agreeable façade and asked for lunch.

Never have I done a wiser thing.

It is odd how trifling are the determining factors in some of the most momentous decisions that face us in life. Here was I alone, and tired, and in a strange part of the country, with the necessity before me of finding "a home from home" for three or four days, and yet, even without entering any of the other inns, I agreed to stay in this one. And why? Well, a little because the landlord (a big, strong, leisurely man with a white beard and a massive head), who himself did the waiting, was pleasant and attentive, and a little because his daughter, who had charge of the bar, was attentive and pleasant. But the real reason was pickled onions. Such was the excellence of these divine roots that I let everything else go. Nights might be bad, but lunches and dinners would be good: for were there not these onions, pickled according to a recipe of the host's mother, now with God, in her day famous for the best ways of preserving and curing and, indeed, of doing everything that a good housewife should? The enthusiasm displayed by this patriarchal Boniface for his mother was perfectly charming, its novelty being part of its charm. Very big landlords with white beards and footfalls that shake thehouse do not, as a rule, talk about their mothers at all. Should they, through strange martial vicissitudes, come, as this one had done, to wait at table, they wait and go. But this one hovered, and talked reverently of his mother's household genius, giving me the while such delicious proofs of it that I could not have torn myself away.

To those exquisite esculents I shall be eternally grateful, for they brought me into knowledge of one of the most interesting of inns. It is a survival; indeed, to my great satisfaction, the word "posting" occurred in my bill, for a journey by wagonette to a distant village was thus ennobled. The stables are immense, and contained one horse. The coach-house is immense, and contained seventeen carriages of various kinds, from omnibus to dogcart, but chiefly broughams, all in a state of mouldiness. Coming by degrees to be recognised as a member of the little family which, by ceaseless activity, ran this unwieldy place—father, daughter, a superb cook, a maid-servant, and an ostler—I was free to wander as I would, and exploring the various floors and passages I came upon a billiard table whose cushions belonged to the Stone Age, and an assembly-room with a musicians' gallery. In the kitchen I watched at her mysteries the admirable lady who cooked and carried on thenoble traditions of the landlord's mother as set forth in a manuscript book in her own hand. In the bar parlour I watched the landlord, according to the new regulations, water down his spirits, and heard instalments of his long life, spent wholly, in this "house" and that, in ministering to the wants of his fellow-creatures—tired, or hungry, or thirsty, but chiefly thirsty. Then later in the evening the little cosy room would fill, and I would quietly take my place as one of the best listeners that its habitués had ever talked to. Listening is an old accomplishment of mine, and here, amid the friendliest of strangers, I gave it full play; and you would be surprised to know how much I know of Kingsbridge life. Probably their surprise would be even greater.

And still I have not really begun to describe this most alluring inn. In the cellar, for example, there was some '47 port....

Most people who do not keep shops have, I suppose, at one time or other thought that to keep a shop might be fun; of course, keeping it their own way, selling only what they liked, to whom they liked. No vulgar trade notions at all! The fact that there is no nursery game so popular as keeping shop probably proves this. And none is more popular, except, perhaps, among French country children, who prefer the game of market—each one presiding over a different stall, stocked with the most ingenious miniature counterfeits of vegetables and fruit fashioned chiefly from wild flowers and leaves, and all shouting against each other with terrific French volubility and not a little French wit.

We seldom go so far as actually to open an establishment, but we play with the idea. One of my friends has for years projected a London centre for all the most interesting and vivid European pottery, and if only she could assemble it and maintain the supply, I have little doubt of her success. But the chances are thatit will never materialize, the people whodothings being so rare. Another is at this moment excitedly planning a restaurant in a neighbourhood where one seems peculiarly to be needed, as it is chiefly populated by dwellers in flats, the slogan of which is to be "Where to dine when cook goes out"; but that, too, will probably end in talk.

One would say, on the face of it, that a shop opened in a locality where that kind of shop did not previously exist would have a better chance than a shop opened next door to another shop of the same kind—apart from any unpleasantness that such contiguity might produce. But the methods of business are inscrutable, and there seem to be countless ways, often in direct opposition to each other, of conducting it successfully. One would, at the first blush, have called this principle of scientific selection and segregation the soundest; and yet that of congregation seems to be just as sensible; so that while one man succeeds because he is the only tailor in the street, another man can be even more successful because he is in a street where every other establishment is a tailor's too. There are also the antagonistic principles of ostentation and self-effacement, each again apparently satisfactory: so that one hatter, for example, succeeds because he inhabits a palace of light, andanother because you can hardly see through the grimy panes of his old-fashioned and obsolete windows. There are, furthermore, the antipodal theories of singularity and plurality: so that one draper makes as good a thing as he wants out of a single shop, and another rises to wealth by dint of opening twenty shops at once.

And then there are the business people who thrive by apparently doing no business. We all know of shops which no one was ever seen to enter; while at the opposite pole are the mandarins of trade who disdain to disclose their identity to strangers—such as Altman and Tiffany, serenely secure in their anonymous stores.

But to select one's line...?

There was once a man who, without any special training, decided that he would start business in London; and he came to town to prospect and make up his mind, which was curiously blank and receptive. In his walking about he was struck by the number of old curiosity shops in the neighbourhood of the British Museum and South Kensington Museum, which led to the inference, hitherto unsuspected by him, but known to the dealers, that there is something exciting in the air of those places, so that the visitor, having seen many odd things, wishesto acquire some for himself. All his plans to establish himself in London failed, however, because he could not obtain a site for a monumental mason's yard opposite Westminster Abbey.

My own ambition, if ever I took to keeping a shop, would be merely to be in a congenial line of business. Some things are interesting to sell, and some most emphatically are not. Old books would appear to be an ideal commodity; but this is far from the case, because I should want not to sell them but to keep them. Pictures, too—how could one part with a good one? And, equally, how permit a customer to be so misguided as to pay money for a bad one? A fruit-shop would be a not unpleasant place to move about in, were it not that it is one of my profoundest beliefs that fruit ought not to be sold at all, but given away. The tobacconist's was once an urbane and agreeable career; but it is so no longer. To-day the tobacconist is a mere cog in a vast piece of machinery called a Trust; and the tobacco-shop is as remote from the old divan, where connoisseurs of the leaf met and tested and talked, as the modern chemist's, with its photograph frames and "seasonable gifts," is remote from the home of Rosamund's purple jar.

That ingenious and adventurous tobacconist,Mr. Godall, revisiting the London which he found, or made, so like Baghdad, would have to discover a new kind of headquarters. Perhaps he would open an oyster-bar (it was in an oyster-bar near Leicester Square that the young man proffered the cream tarts); more likely an American bar. But if he really wanted to observe human nature at its most vulnerable and impulsive—that is, at night—he would take a coffee-stall. After ten o'clock, the coffee-stall men are the truest friends that poor humanity has. There is a coffee-stall within a few yards of my abode; and no matter at what hour I return, the keeper of it is always brisk and jovial, with the hottest beverages that ever were set to timid lips. His stall is surrounded by hungry and thirsty revellers, chiefly soldiers, not infrequently accompanied by the fair. Every one calls him by his Christian name, and every one talks and is jolly. And no matter at what hour in the night I wake, or from what disconcerting dream, I am always at once secure in my mind that the old recognisable world is still about me and I have not passed over in my sleep, because the voices and laughter about the coffee-stall fill the air. "Good," I say, "I am still here." Now it would be a pleasant thing, and prove one's life not to have been lived invain, to be able to minister in the small hours gaily to so many heroes, and incidentally to impart to wakeful and disquieted neighbours reassurance of stability.

It is my destiny (said my friend) to buy in the dearest markets and to sell—if I succeed in selling at all—in the cheapest. Usually, indeed, having tired of a picture or decorative article, I have positively to give it away; almost to make its acceptance by another a personal favour to me. But the other day was marked by an exception to this rule so striking that I have been wondering if perhaps the luck has not changed and I am, after all, destined to be that most enviable thing, a successful dealer.

It happened thus. In drifting about the old curiosity shops of a cathedral city I came upon a portfolio of water-colour drawings, among which was one that to my eye would have been a possible Turner, even if an earlier owner had not shared that opinion or hope and set the magic name with all its initials (so often placed in the wrong order) beneath it.

"How much is this?" I asked scornfully.

"Well," said the dealer, "if it were a genuine Turner it would be worth anything. But let's say ten shillings. You can have it for that; butI don't mind if you don't, because I'm going to London next week and should take it with me to get an opinion."

I pondered.

"Mind you, I don't guarantee it," he added.

I gave him the ten shillings.

By what incredible means I found a purchaser for the drawing at fifty pounds there is no need to tell, for the point of this narrative resides not in bargaining with collectors, but in bargaining with my own soul. The astonishing fact remains that I achieved a profit of forty-nine pounds ten and was duly elated. I then began to think.

The dealer (so my thoughts ran) in that little street by the cathedral west door, he ought to participate in this. He behaved very well to me and I ought to behave well to him. It would be only fair to give him half.

Thereupon I sat down and wrote a little note saying that the potential Turner drawing, which no doubt he recollected, had turned out to be authentic, and I had great pleasure in enclosing him half of the proceeds, as I considered that to be the only just and decent course.

Having no stamps and the hour being late I did not post this, and went to bed.

At about 3.30 a. m. I woke widely up and, according to custom, began to review my life'serrors, which are in no danger of ever suffering from loneliness. From these I reached, by way of mitigation, my recent successful piece of chaffering, and put the letter to the dealer under both examination and cross-examination. Why (so my thoughts ran) give him half? Why be quixotic? This is no world for quixotry. It was my eye that detected the probability of the drawing, not his. He had indeed failed; did not know his own business. Why put a premium on ineptitude? No, a present of, say, ten pounds at the most would more than adequately meet the case.

Sleep still refusing to oblige me, I took a book of short stories and read one. Then I closed my eyes again, and again began to think about the dealer. Why (so my thoughts ran) send him ten pounds? It will only give him a wrong idea of his customers, none other of whom would be so fair, so sporting, as I. He will expect similar letters every day and be disappointed, and then he will become embittered and go down the vale of tears a miserable creature. He looked a nice old man too; a pity, nay a crime, to injure such a nature. No, ten pounds is absurd. Five would be plenty. Ten would put him above himself.

While I was dressing the next morning I thought about the dealer again. Why should I(so my thoughts ran), directly I had for the first time in my life brought off a financialcoup, spoil it by giving a large part of the profit away? Was not that flying in the face of the Goddess of Business, whoever she may be? Was it not asking her to disregard me—only a day or so after we had at last got on terms? There is no fury like a woman scorned; it would probably be the end of me. The Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts have won to success and affluence probably just because they don't do these foolish impulsive things. If I am to make any kind of figure in this newrôleof fine-art speculator (so my thoughts continued) I must control my feelings. No, five pounds is absurd. Adouceurof one pound will meet the case. It will be nothing to me—or, at any rate, nothing serious—but a gift of quail and manna from a clear sky to the dealer, without, however, doing him any harm. A pound will be ample, accompanied by a brief note.

The note was to the effect that I had sold the drawing at a profit which enabled me to make him a present, because it was an old, and perhaps odd, belief of mine that one should do this kind of thing; good luck should be shared.

I had the envelope in my pocket containing the note and the cheque when I reached the club for lunch; and that afternoon I played bridgeso disastrously that I was glad I had not posted it.

After all (so my thoughts ran, as I destroyed the envelope and contents) such bargains are all part of the game. Buying and selling are a perfectly straightforward matter between dealer and customer. The dealer asks as much as he thinks he can extort, and the customer, having paid it, is under no obligation whatever to the dealer. The incident is closed.

There are, no doubt, matters of importance which must always agitate the minds of Italian senators and the souls of Italian reformers; the country of Dante, Garibaldi, and D'Annunzio cannot for long be without deep and vital problems, political and social: but for me, in that otherwise delectable land, the dominant question is, What becomes of the mosquito while you are hunting for him? (I say "him," although, of course, there are supporters of the theory that mosquitoes are feminine. But I know he is a he, and I know his name, too: it is, for too obvious reasons, Macbeth.)

This is my procedure. I undress, then I put on a dressing-gown and slippers, and, lifting the mosquito curtains, I place the candle inside them on the bed. Then, with the closest scrutiny, I satisfy myself that there is no mosquito inside, as indeed Eleanora, the handmaid, had done some hours earlier, when she made the bed. "Niente, niente," she had assured me, as she always does. None the less, again I go carefully round it, examining the net for any faulty hangingwhich might let in an insect ascending with malice from the floor.

This being done, I creep through, blow out the candle, and go to sleep.

I have slept perhaps an hour when a shrill bugle call, which I conceive in my dreams to be the Last Trump, awakens me, and as I wake I realise once again the melancholy fact that it is no Last Trump at all, but that there is, as there always is, a mosquito inside the curtain.

Already he has probably bitten me in several places; at any cost he must be prevented from biting me again. I sit up and feel my face all over to discover if my beauty has been assailed; for that is the thing I most dread. (Without beauty what are we?) I lie quite still while I do this, straining to catch his horrid song again; and suddenly there it is, so near that I duck my head swiftly, nearly ricking my neck in doing so.

This confirming my worst fears, there is nothing for it now but to lift the curtains, slip out on to the cold stone floor, light the candle, and once again go through the futile but necessary movement of locating and expelling a mosquito.

That there will be none to expel, I know.

None the less I crawl about and peer into every corner. I shake the clothes, I do everything that can be done short of stripping the curtains, which I am too sleepy to do. And thenI blow out the candle for the second time and endeavour to fall asleep again.

But this time it is more difficult: Macbeth has performed his pet trick too thoroughly. At last, however, I drowse away, again to be galvanised suddenly into intense and dreadful vigilance by the bugle shrilling an inch from my ear.

And so once again I get up and once again the pest vanishes into nothing....

The next time I don't care a soldo if he is there or not, I am so tired; and the rest of the night is passed in a half-sleep, in which real mosquitoes and imaginary mosquitoes equally do their worst, and I turn no hair. And then, some years later, the blessed dawn breaks and spreads and another Italian night of misery passes into glorious day; and, gradually recognising this bliss, I sit up in bed and begin to tear away at the fresh poison in my poor hands and wrists, which were like enough to a map of a volcanic island in the Pacific yesterday, but now are poignantly more so.

And suddenly, as I thus scratch, I am conscious of a motionless black speck on the curtain above me....

It is—yes—no—yes—it is Macbeth.

I agitate the gauze, but he takes no notice; I approach my hand, a movement which in his saner moments he would fly from with theagility of electricity; he remains still. He is either dead or dazed.

I examine him minutely and observe him to be alive, and the repugnant truth is forced upon me that he is not merely drunk but drunk with my blood. That purple tide must be intoxicating; and his intemperance has been his ruin.

There is only one thing to be done. I have no paltry feelings of revenge; but his death is indicated. The future must be considered. And so I kill him. It is done with the greatest ease. He makes no resistance at all: merely, dying, saluting me with my own blood. It is odd to have it thus returned.

A good colour, I think, and get up, conscious of no triumph.

Then, going to the glass, I discern a red lump on my best feature....

It was pointed out that one of the most striking novelties of the Peace Day revels in London was the number of girls dressed as men, chiefly as soldiers and sailors. Men who were dressed as women—at least recognisably so—I did not observe, but then in a crowd at night they might be more difficult to detect, whereas no woman can be a really plausible man. The idea dominating these girls was less to deceive than to be hilarious, and most of them, I am sure, before the evening was over, achieved genuine male company.

For a man to pretend to be a woman is a less savoury proposition; but it can be done without offence (as in "Charley's Aunt"), and I heard the other day a pleasant story of such a disguise, the hero of which is a comedian of great acceptance by the youthful every Christmas. This popular performer laid a wager with themaître d'hôtelof a famous London restaurant that some time or other within the coming year he would enter the restaurant dressed as an old woman, and be served with lunch as though hewere an ordinary customer. Themaître d'hôtel, who had been maintaining that men dressed as women were, at any rate in broad daylight, always to be detected, accepted, and a sum was fixed sufficient to make the enterprise worth while, the conditions being that if the disguise were penetrated themaître d'hôtelshould indicate the discovery by a somewhat idiomatic form of words, more suitable to be applied to a sham lady than a real one; and if the actor succeeded he should send for the manager and thank him for his lunch. Each winner would add a request for the amount of the bet.

A few weeks ago the comedian won. But the cream of the story is that during the year no fewer than three unoffending and genuine old ladies, as female as God created them, were, on different occasions, more than astonished to be accosted by themaître d'hôtelin the midst of their meals with a triumphant and not too refined catch-phrase, and to be asked for a tenner.

People look now so little at the clothes of others that disguise must have become easier than it was. The War brought so many strange costumes into being that we stare hardly at all, and at uniforms never. A man wearing a kilt, leggings, and spurs might, before the War, have attracted attention; we now merely mutter, "Another of those Mounted Highlanders," and passon. In fact, we look more at members of the no-hat brigade than at anyone else, and at them only to see if they are authentic bare-heads or chance to have their hats in their hands.

Although the principal reasons for disguise are to assist in evading justice (the criminal) and to assist in pursuing crime (the detective), there are, I hope, a few whimsical humourists left who take to it for its own sake or to make things more possible. A dull July day with a north wind, such as in 1919 was the price of a divine May and June, might be made quite tolerable if we masqueraded through it and pulled the legs of our friends, like Sir Walter Scott's friend, the lady of the "Mystifications." I am sure that it would enable us to have better holidays. But we should have to be thorough: it is no use dressing up as a policeman and walking fast, or assuming the mien of a Jewish financier and taking long steps, or borrowing a scarecrow's wardrobe to beg in and forgetting to supplant our natural assurance with a cringe. In fact, all the real work is to come after the clothes are on. You may sit in Clarkson's for a couple of hours having a beard attached to your face (as I once watched a friend of mine doing), but, when it is finished, you must look and behave not merelylike a man with a beard, as he did, but like a bearded man. He came away so painfully aware of a transfigured chin that he collected every eye and the police began to follow him merely on suspicion.

Indeed, to carry a disguise well requires unremitting concentration. The walk comes first: one would have continually to remember it. Then the carriage of the hands. Dressed as a curate, for example, you would give it all away by strolling along with your hands in your pockets; just as if you affected to be a seller of motor-cars you would fail if you had them anywhere else. This need of unrelaxing thought is the reason why disguise would be such a useful ally of the holiday maker. The completest escape from one's ordinary preoccupations could be obtained by a resolute simulation of this kind. It is not enough to go to Brighton; that is only half a holiday. But to go to Brighton as a bishop, say, or a taxi-driver, an American soldier or an Indian law student, and keep it up—that would be a total change, a vacation indeed.

Two examples of broken English have recently fallen upon my grateful ear—both from the lips of foreign door-keepers of restaurants.

The first touched upon an untimely, although welcome, heat-wave.

"It is," I remarked with an affability equalled only by want of originality, "almost too warm."

"Yes," the porter replied; "ze 'ot, 'e come all in one."

On the second occasion I was waiting for a guest who was late. After a while I commented, pleasantly, to the door-keeper on the tendency of the fair sex to be behind time.

He laughed the light, easy laugh of one who has deep intimacy with the world we live in. "Ladies always late," he said; "always make themselves wish and desire for."

However faulty in construction, both those phrases are epigrammatic. I should not go so far as to say they could not be improved upon, yet it would be difficult to make them more vivid.To endow the heat with gender is assuredly to add to its reality: a blast from Vulcan's furnace, for example; while the remark about the tarrying ladies enshrines a great verity such as restaurant door-keepers are perhaps better fitted to understand than most of us. At any rate, if a restaurant door-keeper does not learn such things, who can? Both phrases also show that neither speaker, after I know not how many years in England, is yet making any effort to talk English, but is content to clothe his own native thoughts in the most adequate English apparel that he can collect; just as I, for one, never have done in France other than translate more or less faithfully my English sentences into French. As for talking French—never! No such good fortune. But I am quite sure that, however amusing my blunders have been, no one has ever thought them epigrammatic, because the English syntax does not automatically tend to witty compression as the French does.

That illiteracy can get there as quickly and surely as the highest culture, though by a different route, is proved by the following instance.

Once upon a time there was a Little Tailor in a little shop in Soho. Not a tailor in the ordinary sense of the word, but a ladies' tailor. He was never seen out of shirt sleeves whichmight have been whiter, and he came from one of the foreign lands where the youths seem to be under conscription for this trade. What land it was I cannot say for certain, but I should guess Poland.

Once upon a time—in fact, at the same time—there was also a lady connected with the stage, and as her theatre was contiguous to the Little Tailor's place of business, it was only natural that when one of her gowns was suddenly torn her dresser should hasten to him to have it put right. But the charge was so disproportionate to the slight work done that the dresser deferred payment, and deferred it so long that the Little Tailor had to lay down the shears and take the pen in their place. And this is what he wrote:—

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