ghtenments should ever wholly extinguish, and I ask
you to remember Notting Hill. For, after all, in this cosmopolitan
magnificence, she has played no small part. Your dates may come from
the tall palms of Barbary, your sugar from the strange islands of the
tropics, your tea from the secret villages of the Empire of the
Dragon. That this room might be furnished, forests may have been
spoiled under the Southern Cross, and leviathans speared under the
Polar Star. But you yourself--surely no inconsiderable treasure--you
yourself, the brain that wields these vast interests--you yourself, at
least, have grown to strength and wisdom between these grey houses and
under this rainy sky. This city which made you, and thus made your
fortunes, is threatened with war. Come forth and tell to the ends of
the earth this lesson. Oil is from the North and fruits from the
South; rices are from India and spices from Ceylon; sheep are from New
Zealand and men from Notting Hill."

The grocer sat for some little while, with dim eyes and his mouth
open, looking rather like a fish. Then he scratched the back of his
head, and said nothing. Then he said--

"Anything out of the shop, sir?"

Wayne looked round in a dazed way. Seeing a pile of tins of pine-apple
chunks, he waved his stick generally towards them.

"Yes," he said; "I'll take those."

"All those, sir?" said the grocer, with greatly increased interest.

"Yes, yes; all those," replied Wayne, still a little bewildered, like
a man splashed with cold water.

"Very good, sir; thank you, sir," said the grocer with animation. "You
may count upon my patriotism, sir."

"I count upon it already," said Wayne, and passed out into the
gathering night.

The grocer put the box of dates back in its place.

"What a nice fellow he is!" he said. "It's odd how often they are
nice. Much nicer than those as are all right."

Meanwhile Adam Wayne stood outside the glowing chemist's shop,
unmistakably wavering.

"What a weakness it is!" he muttered. "I have never got rid of it from
childhood--the fear of this magic shop. The grocer is rich, he is
romantic, he is poetical in the truest sense, but he is not--no, he is
not supernatural. But the chemist! All the other shops stand in
Notting Hill, but this stands in Elf-land. Look at those great burning
bowls of colour. It must be from them that God paints the sunsets. It
is superhuman, and the superhuman is all the more uncanny when it is
beneficent