ng man, do my best to protect it. If, on the
other hand, he should assert his intention of trying to obtain it by
means of an action in any court of law, I should take it out of my pocket
and hand it to him, and think I had got off cheaply."

He squared the matter with the florid-faced lady for a five-pound note,
which must have represented a month's profits on the paper; and she
departed, taking her damaged offspring with her. After she was gone, our
chief spoke kindly to me. He said:

"Don't think I am blaming you in the least; it is not your fault, it is
Fate. Keep to moral advice and criticism--there you are distinctly good;
but don't try your hand any more on 'Useful Information.' As I have
said, it is not your fault. Your information is correct enough--there is
nothing to be said against that; it simply is that you are not lucky with
it."

I would that I had followed his advice always; I would have saved myself
and other people much disaster. I see no reason why it should be, but so
it is. If I instruct a man as to the best route between London and Rome,
he loses his luggage in Switzerland, or is nearly shipwrecked off Dover.
If I counsel him in the purchase of a camera, he gets run in by the
German police for photographing fortresses. I once took a deal of
trouble to explain to a man how to marry his deceased wife's sister at
Stockholm. I found out for him the time the boat left Hull and the best
hotels to stop at. There was not a single mistake from beginning to end
in the information with which I supplied him; no hitch occurred anywhere;
yet now he never speaks to me.

Therefore it is that I have come to restrain my passion for the giving of
information; therefore it is that nothing in the nature of practical
instruction will be found, if I can help it, within these pages.

There will be no description of towns, no historical reminiscences, no
architecture, no morals.

I once asked an intelligent foreigner what he thought of London.

He said: "It is a very big town."

I said: "What struck you most about it?"

He replied: "The people."

I said: "Compared with other towns--Paris, Rome, Berlin,--what did you
think of it?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "It is bigger," he said; "what more can one
say?"

One anthill is very much like another. So many avenues, wide or narrow,
where the little creatures swarm in strange confusion; these bustling by,
important; these halting to pow-wow with one