nt is
the street as the mysterious brougham pauses, lovely the eyes that
flash, and graceful the white-gloved hand that beckons from the carriage
window; and how can they resist (for they are only human) the lure of so
adventurous, so enchanting an invitation?

THE GARDEN SUBURB

I had often heard of the Hampstead Garden Suburb, and the attempt of its
inhabitants to create an atmosphere of the Higher Culture, to
concentrate, as it were, the essence of the ideal life in one region.
But I must now confess that it was in a spirit of profane curiosity that
I walked up towards its courts and closes. And when I saw the notices of
the Societies for Ethical Culture and Handicrafts and Child Study, the
lectures on Reincarnation, the Holy Grail, the Signs of the Zodiac, and
the Teaching of the Holy Zoroaster, I am afraid I laughed. But how
shallow, how thin this laughter soon sounded amid the quiet amenity, the
beautiful distinction of this pretty paradise! It was an afternoon of
daydreams; the autumnal light under the low clouds was propitious to
inner recollection; and as I walked the streets of this ideal city,
soothed by the sense of order and beautiful architecture all around me,
I began to feel that I too was an Idealist, that here was my spiritual
home, and that it would be a right and seemly thing to give up the
cinemas and come and make my dwelling on this hill-top. Pictures floated
before my eyes of tranquil days, days of gardening and handicrafts and
lectures, evenings spent in perusing the world's masterpieces.

Although I still frequent the cinemas, and spend too much time gazing in
at the windows of expensive shops, and the reverie of that afternoon has
come to no fruition, yet I feel myself a better person for it: I feel
that it marks me off from the merely cynical and worldly. For I at least
have had a Pisgah sight of the Promised City; I have made its ideal my
own, if but for an afternoon, and only in a daydream.

SUNDAY CALLS

'Well, I must say!' Reason exclaimed, when we found ourselves in the
street again.

'What's the matter now?' I asked uneasily.

'Why are you always trying to be some one else? Why not be what you
really are?'

'But what am I really? Again I ask you?'

'I do hate to see you playing the ass; and think how they must laugh at
you!'

The glossy and respected image of myself I had left in the house behind
us began to tarnish.

'And what next?' my querulous companio