the very prose of warfare--it
has degenerated into a siege. A siege may be defined as a peace plus
the inconvenience of war. Of course Wayne cannot hold out. There is no
more chance of help from anywhere else than of ships from the moon.
And if old Wayne had stocked his street with tinned meats till all his
garrison had to sit on them, he couldn't hold out for more than a
month or two. As a matter of melancholy fact, he has done something
rather like this. He has stocked his street with food until there must
be uncommonly little room to turn round. But what is the good? To hold
out for all that time and then to give in of necessity, what does it
mean? It means waiting until your victories are forgotten, and then
taking the trouble to be defeated. I cannot understand how Wayne can
be so inartistic.

"And how odd it is that one views a thing quite differently when one
knows it is defeated! I always thought Wayne was rather fine. But now,
when I know that he is done for, there seem to be nothing else but
Wayne. All the streets seem to point at him, all the chimneys seem to
lean towards him. I suppose it is a morbid feeling; but Pump Street
seems to be the only part of London that I feel physically. I suppose,
I say, that it is morbid. I suppose it is exactly how a man feels
about his heart when his heart is weak. 'Pump Street'--the heart is a
pump. And I am drivelling.

"Our finest leader at the front is, beyond all question, General
Wilson. He has adopted alone among the other Provosts the uniform of
his own halberdiers, although that fine old sixteenth-century garb was
not originally intended to go with red side-whiskers. It was he who,
against a most admirable and desperate defence, broke last night into
Pump Street and held it for at least half an hour. He was afterwards
expelled from it by General Turnbull, of Notting Hill, but only after
desperate fighting and the sudden descent of that terrible darkness
which proved so much more fatal to the forces of General Buck and
General Swindon.

"Provost Wayne himself, with whom I had, with great good fortune, a
most interesting interview, bore the most eloquent testimony to the
conduct of General Wilson and his men. His precise words are as
follows: 'I have bought sweets at his funny little shop when I was
four years old, and ever since. I never noticed anything, I am ashamed
to say, except that he talked through his nose, and didn't wash
himself particularly. And he ca