er to trip together;
they pack as close as they can; they have a suffocating passion of
philanthropy.

.....

But among the minor and milder aspects of the same principle, I have no
hesitation in placing the problem of the colloquial barber. Before any
modern man talks with authority about loving men, I insist (I insist
with violence) that he shall always be very much pleased when his barber
tries to talk to him. His barber is humanity: let him love that. If he
is not pleased at this, I will not accept any substitute in the way of
interest in the Congo or the future of Japan. If a man cannot love his
barber whom he has seen, how shall he love the Japanese whom he has not
seen?

It is urged against the barber that he begins by talking about the
weather; so do all dukes and diplomatists, only that they talk about
it with ostentatious fatigue and indifference, whereas the barber talks
about it with an astonishing, nay incredible, freshness of interest. It
is objected to him that he tells people that they are going bald.
That is to say, his very virtues are cast up against him; he is blamed
because, being a specialist, he is a sincere specialist, and because,
being a tradesman, he is not entirely a slave. But the only proof of
such things is by example; therefore I will prove the excellence of the
conversation of barbers by a specific case. Lest any one should accuse
me of attempting to prove it by fictitious means, I beg to say quite
seriously that though I forget the exact language employed, the
following conversation between me and a human (I trust), living barber
really took place a few days ago.

.....

I had been invited to some At Home to meet the Colonial Premiers, and
lest I should be mistaken for some partly reformed bush-ranger out
of the interior of Australia I went into a shop in the Strand to get
shaved. While I was undergoing the torture the man said to me:

"There seems to be a lot in the papers about this new shaving, sir. It
seems you can shave yourself with anything--with a stick or a stone or a
pole or a poker" (here I began for the first time to detect a sarcastic
intonation) "or a shovel or a----"

Here he hesitated for a word, and I, although I knew nothing about the
matter, helped him out with suggestions in the same rhetorical vein.

"Or a button-hook," I said, "or a blunderbuss or a battering-ram or a
piston-rod----"

He resumed, refreshed with this assistance, "Or a curtain rod or a
c