l position and behaviour; and it is very
peculiar. When the 'bus is empty, these persons are sympathetic and
friendly to one another, almost to tenderness; but when there is much
traffic, a tone of severity is observable upon the side of the
conductor. 'What are yer a-driving on for just as a party's getting
in? Will nothing suit but to break a party's neck?' 'Wake up, will
yer? or do yer want that ere Bayswater to pass us?' are inquiries he
will make in the most peremptory manner. Or he will concentrate
contempt in the laconic but withering observation: 'Now then,
stoopid!'

When we consider that the driver is after all the driver--that the
'bus is under his guidance and management, and may be said _pro tem_,
to be his own--indeed, in case of collision or other serious
extremity, he calls it so: 'What the infernal regions are yer banging
into my 'bus for?' etc., etc.,--I say, this being his exalted
position, the injurious language of the man on the step is, to say the
least of it, disrespectful.

On the other hand, it is the conductor who fills the 'bus, and even
entices into it, by lures and wiles, persons who are not voluntarily
going his way at all. It is he who advertises its presence to the
passers-by, and spares neither lung nor limb in attracting passengers.
If the driver is lord and king, yet the conductor has a good deal to
do with the administration: just as the Mikado of Japan, who sits
above the thunder and is almost divine, is understood to be assisted
and even 'conducted' by the Tycoon. The connection between those
potentates is perhaps the most exact reproduction of that between the
'bus driver and his cad; but even in England there is a pretty close
parallel to it in the mutual relation of the author and the
professional critic.

While the former is in his spring-time, the analogy is indeed almost
complete. For example, however much he may have plagiarised, the book
does belong to the author: he calls it, with pardonable pride (and
especially if anyone runs it down), 'my book.' He has written it, and
probably paid pretty handsomely for getting it published. Even the
right of translation, if you will look at the bottom of the
title-page, is somewhat superfluously reserved to him. Yet nothing can
exceed the patronage which he suffers at the hands of the critic, and
is compelled to submit to in sullen silence. When the book-trade is
slack--that is, in the summer season--the pair get on together pretty