e Caesar fell; I have heard the soft
rustle of rich, rare robes in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair, and I have
heard the teeth-necklaces rattle around the ebony throats of the belles
of Tongataboo; I have panted beneath the sun's fierce rays in India, and
frozen under the icy blasts of Greenland; I have mingled with the teeming
hordes of old Cathay, and, deep in the great pine forests of the Western
World, I have lain, wrapped in my blanket, a thousand miles beyond the
shores of human life."

B., to whom I explained my leaning towards this style of diction, said
that exactly the same effect could be produced by writing about places
quite handy. He said:--

"I could go on like that without having been outside England at all. I
should say:

"I have smoked my fourpenny shag in the sanded bars of Fleet Street, and
I have puffed my twopenny Manilla in the gilded balls of the Criterion; I
have quaffed my foaming beer of Burton where Islington's famed Angel
gathers the little thirsty ones beneath her shadowing wings, and I have
sipped my tenpenny _ordinaire_ in many a garlic-scented salon of Soho.
On the back of the strangely-moving ass I have urged--or, to speak more
correctly, the proprietor of the ass, or his agent, from behind has
urged--my wild career across the sandy heaths of Hampstead, and my canoe
has startled the screaming wild-fowl from their lonely haunts amid the
sub-tropical regions of Battersea. Adown the long, steep slope of One
Tree Hill have I rolled from top to foot, while laughing maidens of the
East stood round and clapped their hands and yelled; and, in the
old-world garden of that pleasant Court, where played the fair-haired
children of the ill-starred Stuarts, have I wandered long through many
paths, my arm entwined about the waist of one of Eve's sweet daughters,
while her mother raged around indignantly on the other side of the hedge,
and never seemed to get any nearer to us. I have chased the
lodging-house Norfolk Howard to his watery death by the pale lamp's
light; I have, shivering, followed the leaping flea o'er many a mile of
pillow and sheet, by the great Atlantic's margin. Round and round, till
the heart--and not only the heart--grows sick, and the mad brain whirls
and reels, have I ridden the small, but extremely hard, horse, that may,
for a penny, be mounted amid the plains of Peckham Rye; and high above
the heads of the giddy throngs of Barnet (though it is doubtful if anyone
among them