for self-expression, but a man with thirty serials to his credit. Shall I
name the periodical? It was the _Golden Hours_, I think. Ginger-beer and
jangling bells were but a fringe upon his darker purpose. His desk was
somewhere in the back of the house, and there he would rise to all the
fury of a South-Sea wreck--for his genius lay in the broader effects. Even
while we simpletons jested feebly and practiced drinking with the open
throat--which we esteemed would be of service when we had progressed to
the heavier art of drinking real beer--even as we munched upon his ginger
cakes, he had left us and was exterminating an army corps in the back
room. He was a little man, pale and stooped, but with a genius for
truantry--a pilgrim of the Bagdad road.

But we move on too high a plane. Most of us are admitted into truantry by
the accidents, merely, of our senses. By way of instance, the sniff of a
rotten apple will set a man off as on seven-league boots to the valleys of
his childhood. The dry rustling of November leaves re-lights the fires of
youth. It was only this afternoon that so slight a circumstance as a ray
of light flashing in my eye provided me an agreeable and unexpected
truantry. It sent me climbing the mountains of the North and in no less
company than that of Brunhilda and a troop of Valkyrs.

It is likely enough that none of you have heard of Long Street. As far as
I am aware it is not known to general fame. It is typically a back street
of the business of a city, that is, the ventages of its buildings are
darkened most often by packing cases and bales. Behind these ventages are
metal shoots. To one uninitiated in the ways of commerce it would appear
that these openings were patterned for the multiform enactment of an Amy
Robsart tragedy, with such devilish deceit are the shoots laid up against
the openings. First the teamster teeters and cajoles the box to the edge
of the dray, then, with a sudden push, he throws it off down the shoot,
from which it disappears with a booming sound. As I recall it was by some
such treachery that Amy Robsart met her death. Be that as it may, all day
long great drays go by with Earls of Leicester on their lofty seats,
prevailing on their horses with stout, Elizabethan language. If there
comes a tangle in the traffic it is then especially that you will hear a
largeness of speech as of spacious and heroic days.

During the meaner hours of daylight it is my privilege to occupy a de