o confer the stuffy and inane delights of the "Hall" upon
that sturdily respectable suburban middle class--the backbone of London
society--which had hitherto, to a great extent, eschewed this particular
form of dissipation. The trust amassed wealth by striking a shrewd blow
at our national character. Its entertainments were to be all
refinement--"fun without vulgarity"; the oily announcements were
nauseating. But they answered their purpose only too well. The great and
still religious bourgeois class was securely hooked; and then the name
of "Middle Class Halls" was dropped, and the programme provided in these
garish palaces became simply an inexpensive and rather amateurish
imitation of those of the older halls, plus a kind of prudish,
sentimental, and even quasi-religious lubricity, which made them
altogether revolting, and infinitely deleterious.

But our choice upon this occasion had fallen upon the most famous of the
old halls. Of the performance I remember a topical song which evoked
enthusiastic applause. It was an incredibly stupid piece of doggerel
about England's position in the world; and the shiny-faced exquisite who
declaimed it strutted to and fro like a bantam cock at each fresh roar
of applause from the heated house. When he used the word "fight" he
waved an imaginary sword and assumed a ridiculous posture, which he
evidently connected with warlike exercises of some kind. The song
praised the Government--"A Government er business men; men that's got
sense"--and told how this wonderful Government had stopped the pouring
out of poor folks' money upon flag-waving, to devote it to poor folks'
needs. It alluded to the title that Administration had earned: "The
Destroyers"; and acclaimed it a proud title, because it meant the
destruction of "gold-laced bunkcombe," and of "vampires that were
preying on the British working man."

But the chorus was the thing, and the perspiring singer played conductor
with all the airs and graces of a spangled showman in a booth, while the
huge audience yelled itself hoarse over this. I can only recall two
lines of it, and these were to the effect that: "They"--meaning the
other Powers of civilization--"will never go for England, because
England's got the dibs."

It was rather a startling spectacle; that vast auditorium, in which one
saw countless flushed faces, tier on tier, gleaming through a haze of
tobacco smoke; their mouths agape as they roared out the vapid lines of
th