apers,
and then they pretend to be in possession of the darkest stable secrets.
If they are wrong, and they usually are, they advertise their own
infallibility all the more brazenly. I do not exactly know what getting
money under false pretences may be if the proceedings which I have
described do not come under that heading, and I wonder what the police
think of the business. They very soon catch a poor Rommany wench who
tells fortunes, and she goes to gaol for three months. But I suppose
that the Rommany rawnee does not contribute to the support of
influential newspapers. A sharp detective ought to secure clear cases
against at least a dozen of these parasites in a single fortnight, for
they are really stupid in essentials. One of the brotherhood always sets
forth his infallible prophecies from a dark little public-house bar near
Fountain Court. I have seen him, when I came off a journey, trying to
steady his hand at seven in the morning; his twisted, tortured fingers
could hardly hold the pencil, and he was fit for nothing but to sit in
the stinking dusk and soak whisky; but no doubt many of his dupes
imagined that he sat in a palatial office and received myriads of
messages from his ubiquitous corps of spies. He was a poor, diseased,
cunning rogue; I found him amusing, but I do not think that his patrons
always saw the fun of him.

And last there comes the broad outer circle, whereof the thought makes
me sad. On that circle are scattered the men who should be England's
backbone, but they are all suffering by reason of the evil germs wafted
from the centre of contagion. Mr. Matthew Arnold often gave me a good
deal of advice; I wish I could sometimes have given him a little. I
should have told him that all his dainty jeers about middle-class
denseness were beside the mark; all the complacent mockery concerning
the deceased wife's sister and the rest, was of no use. If you see a man
walking right into a deadly quicksand, you do not content yourself with
informing him that a bit of fluff has stuck to his coat. Mr. Arnold
should have gone among the lower middle-class a trifle more instead of
trusting to his superfine imagination, and then he might have got to
know whither our poor, stupid folks are tending. I have just ended an
unpleasantly long spell which I passed among various centres where
middle-class leisure is spent, and I would not care to repeat the
experience for any money. Any given town will suit a competent o