rse of things invite you to dinner at
eight o'clock or so. What inscrutable law, then, compels them to hold
their state dinners at the dread hour of six?

For it is at this time, when the ebb-tide of humanity sets strongest
from the City, that the honoured guest of a City Company may be seen
fighting his way, like a minnow against stream, in a hansom to his
dinner at the hall of the Guild. Still, he goes "where glory waits him,"
so what recks he that the hour is altogether uncongenial and
inconvenient?

Nevertheless, I know as a matter of fact that this earliness compels
many invited guests to decline the honour and pleasure of dining with a
"Gill" (as "Robert" would say), who would without doubt accept the
invitation were the hours of the Guild as reasonable as their cuisine is
excellent.

Personally, however, it has often been a pleasure to me to leave my
easel at four o'clock and prepare to meet my practical City patrons "on
their own midden" at "5.30 for 6."

As an illustration I will record a reminiscence of a very pleasant
evening I once spent in the City, when the festivities--save for my
having to make a speech--went off with that success which is inseparable
from City dinners.

Imprimis, I arrive in daylight and evening dress. These two, like
someone and holy water, don't agree, for not all the waters of Geneva
nor the arts of the queen of all _blanchisseuses_ can destroy the horrid
contrast between a white tie and a white shirt; yet another good
argument in favour of a reasonable dinner hour.

I hate being in a minority. More especially do I detest being in such a
decidedly pronounced minority as one joins when one drives _into_ the
City about six o'clock in the evening against a vast current of toilers
of commerce homeward bound. It may be weak, but I feel it all the same.
I seem to divine the thoughts of the omnibus driver as he gazes down
upon me from his exalted perch--he does not think my shirt is clean. His
sixteen "outsides" bestow upon me a supercilious look that conveys to me
that they opine I am merely cabbing it to the station _en route_ for a
"suburban hop." But I bear up under it all, and think of the magnificent
banquet of which they, poor things, know nothing, and I am beginning to
feel quite proud when a brute of a fellow in charge of a van catches his
wheel in that of my cab and nearly pitches me out. I hurriedly decide to
decline the next invitation I receive for a City dinner.

[Ill