stly girls,
after whom, every now and then, he runs hopelessly, to their intense
gratification. The poultry and bird shops in the Seven Dials are objects
of some attraction, though they savour too much of "business" to be in
very great force. The National Gallery is crowded with unaccustomed art
students. There is about the visitors a quiet air of doing their duty,
and being determined to go through with it at any price. One
brazen-faced quean speculates audibly--in fact, very audibly--as to
which "picter" she should choose if she had her "pick," and decent
matrons pass the particularly High Art of the old masters with
half-averted gaze, as though they were not quite sure of doing right in
countenancing such exhibitions. Hogarth's evergreen "Marriage a la
Mode" is a great centre of attraction, and the youngsters never tire of
listening, as "with weeping and with laughter still is the story told"
over and over again by their elders. Gainsborough's likeness of Mrs.
Siddons is also a great favourite; but perhaps the picture that attracts
most attention is Van Eyck's "John Arnolfini, of Lucca, and his Wife."
The gentleman wears a portentous hat, which tickled the fancy of the
Boxing-day people immensely. There were great speculations too among
them as to whether the curious Tuscan pictures at the top of the stairs
were "needlework" or not. Still, who shall say that these visitors were
not the better for their visit, surrounded as they were by forms of
beauty on every side, even if they did not examine them with the eyes of
connoisseurs?

Boxing-day on the river: The silent street is almost deserted. There is
no rush for the Express boat to-day. It is literally the
streets--muddier and sloppier than the Thames itself--that are the
attraction. Some little boys are making the trip from Westminster to
London Bridge as a treat; and it is an intense joke with them to pretend
to be dreadfully seasick. Boxing-day in the City is synonymous with
stagnation. It is a howling wilderness, with nobody to howl. On the
Metropolitan Railway I verily believe travellers were tripping it like
the little boys on board the penny boat. And so theatre time draws on,
and the interest of Boxing-day grows to a climax. Soon after five
o'clock groups furtively collect outside the playhouses, half-ashamed of
being so early, but gathering courage from numbers to form the
disorderly queue, so unlike that of a Parisian theatre. Boxing-night in
the theatres