He is urbane, swift,
and to the point. There is method in this fellow.' All these things may
be in the man who does not sing, but singing makes them apparent.
Therefore in our trade we sing."

"But there must be some," I said, "who do not sing and who yet are good
tinners."

At this he gave a little shrug of his shoulders and spread down his
hands slightly but imperatively. "There are such," said he. "They are
even numerous. But while they get less trade they are also less happy
men. For I would have you note (saving your respect and that of the
company) that this singing has a quality. It does good within as well
as without. It pleases the singer in his very self as well as brings him
work and clients."

Then I said, "You are right, and I wish to God I had something to tin;
let me however tell you something in place of the trade I cannot offer
you. All things are trine, as you have heard" (here he nodded), "and
your singing does, therefore, not a double but a triple good. For it
gives you pleasure within, it brings in trade and content from others,
and it delights the world around you. It is an admirable thing."

When he heard this he was very pleased. He took off his enormous hat,
which was of straw and as big as a wheel, and said, "Sir, to the next
meeting!" and went off singing with a happier and more triumphant note,
"Carrots, onions, lentils, and beans, depend upon the tinner for their
worth to mankind."

ON "MAILS"

A "Mail" is a place set with trees in regular order so as to form
alleys; sand and gravel are laid on the earth beneath the trees; masonry
of great solidity, grey, and exquisitely worked, surrounds the whole
except on one side, where strong stone pillars carry heavy chains across
the entrance. A "Mail" takes about two hundred years to mature, remains
in perfection for about a hundred more, and then, for all I know, begins
to go off. But neither the exact moment at which it fails nor the length
of its decline is yet fixed, for all "Mails" date from the seventeenth
century at earliest, and the time when most were constructed was that of
Charles II's youth and Louis XIV's maturity--or am I wrong? Were these
two men not much of an age?

I am far from books; I am up in the Pyrenees. Let me consider dates and
reconstruct my formula. I take it that Charles II was more than a boy
when Worcester was fought and when he drank that glass of ale at
Hotighton, at the "George and Dragon" there, and