is
of the world, and takes a worldly standard of cleverness. To the
shallow, showy writer, I fear, she generally pays far more than to the
deep and brilliant thinker; and clever roguery seems often more to her
liking than honest worth. But her scheme is a right and sound one; her
aims and intentions are clear; her methods, on the whole, work fairly
well; and every year she grows in judgment.

One day she will arrive at perfect wisdom, and will pay each man
according to his deserts.

But do not be alarmed. This will not happen in our time.

Turning round, while still musing about Society, I ran against B.
(literally). He thought I was a clumsy ass at first, and said so; but,
on recognising me, apologised for his mistake. He had been there for
some time also, waiting for me. I told him that I had secured two corner
seats in a smoking-carriage, and he replied that he had done so too. By
a curious coincidence, we had both fixed upon the same carriage. I had
taken the corner seats near the platform, and he had booked the two
opposite corners. Four other passengers sat huddled up in the middle.
We kept the seats near the door, and gave the other two away. One should
always practise generosity.

There was a very talkative man in our carriage. I never came across a
man with such a fund of utterly uninteresting anecdotes. He had a friend
with him--at all events, the man was his friend when they started--and he
talked to this friend incessantly, from the moment the train left
Victoria until it arrived at Dover. First of all he told him a long
story about a dog. There was no point in the story whatever. It was
simply a bald narrative of the dog's daily doings. The dog got up in the
morning and barked at the door, and when they came down and opened the
door there he was, and he stopped all day in the garden; and when his
wife (not the dog's wife, the wife of the man who was telling the story)
went out in the afternoon, he was asleep on the grass, and they brought
him into the house, and he played with the children, and in the evening
he slept in the coal-shed, and next morning there he was again. And so
on, for about forty minutes.

A very dear chum or near relative of the dog's might doubtless have found
the account enthralling; but what possible interest a stranger--a man who
evidently didn't even know the dog--could be expected to take in the
report, it was difficult to conceive.

The friend at first tri