, my Gawd," said the conductor, taking him by the shoulders and
forcing him down into the corner seat, "wot am I to do? Carn't somebody
sit on 'im?"

He held him firmly down until the 'bus started, and then released him. At
the top of Chancery Lane the same scene took place, and the poor little
Frenchman became exasperated.

"He keep saying Sharing Cross, Sharing Cross," he exclaimed, turning to
the other passengers; "and it is _no_ Sharing Cross. He is fool."

"Carn't yer understand," retorted the conductor, equally indignant; "of
course I say Sharing Cross--I mean Charing Cross, but that don't mean
that it _is_ Charing Cross. That means--" and then perceiving from the
blank look on the Frenchman's face the utter impossibility of ever making
the matter clear to him, he turned to us with an appealing gesture, and
asked:

"Does any gentleman know the French for 'bloomin' idiot'?"

A day or two afterwards, I happened to enter his omnibus again.

"Well," I asked him, "did you get your French friend to Charing Cross all
right?"

"No, sir," he replied, "you'll 'ardly believe it, but I 'ad a bit of a
row with a policeman just before I got to the corner, and it put 'im
clean out o' my 'ead. Blessed if I didn't run 'im on to Victoria."

CHAPTER XI

Said Brown one evening, "There is but one vice, and that is selfishness."

Jephson was standing before the fire lighting his pipe. He puffed the
tobacco into a glow, threw the match into the embers, and then said:

"And the seed of all virtue also."

"Sit down and get on with your work," said MacShaughnassy from the sofa
where he lay at full length with his heels on a chair; "we're discussing
the novel. Paradoxes not admitted during business hours."

Jephson, however, was in an argumentative mood.

"Selfishness," he continued, "is merely another name for Will. Every
deed, good or bad, that we do is prompted by selfishness. We are
charitable to secure ourselves a good place in the next world, to make
ourselves respected in this, to ease our own distress at the knowledge of
suffering. One man is kind because it gives him pleasure to be kind,
just as another is cruel because cruelty pleases him. A great man does
his duty because to him the sense of duty done is a deeper delight than
would be the case resulting from avoidance of duty. The religious man is
religious because he finds a joy in religion; the moral man moral because
with his strong self-res