obliged
to do like this because there's always such a crowd. It's very 'andsome,
isn't it?"

He agreed that it was. He felt that London had got a long way in front
of him and that he would have to hurry a great deal before he could
catch it up.

At length another imitation of a policeman opened more doors and, with
other sinners, they were released from purgatory into a clattering
paradise, which again offered everything save gratuities. They were
conducted to a small table full of dirty plates and empty glasses in a
corner of the vast and lofty saloon. A man in evening dress whose eye
said, "Now mind, no insulting gratuities!" rushed past the table and in
one deft amazing gesture swept off the whole of its contents and was
gone with them. It was an astounding feat, and when Priam recovered from
his amazement he fell into another amazement on discovering that by some
magic means the man in evening dress had insinuated a gold-charactered
menu into his hands. This menu was exceedingly long--it comprised
everything except gratuities--and, evidently knowing from experience
that it was not a document to be perused and exhausted in five minutes,
the man in evening dress took care not to interrupt the studies of Priam
Farll and Alice Challice during a full quarter of an hour. Then he
returned like a bolt, put them through an examination in the menu, and
fled, and when he was gone they saw that the table was set with a clean
cloth and instruments and empty glasses. A band thereupon burst into gay
strains, like the band at a music-hall after something very difficult on
the horizontal bar. And it played louder and louder; and as it played
louder, so the people talked louder. And the crash of cymbals mingled
with the crash of plates, and the altercations of knives and forks with
the shrill accents of chatterers determined to be heard. And men in
evening dress (a costume which seemed to be forbidden to sitters at
tables) flitted to and fro with inconceivable rapidity, austere,
preoccupied conjurers. And from every marble wall, bevelled mirror, and
Doric column, there spoke silently but insistently the haunting legend,
'No gratuities.'

Thus Priam Farll began his first public meal in modern London. He knew
the hotels; he knew the restaurants, of half-a-dozen countries, but he
had never been so overwhelmed as he was here. Remembering London as a
city of wooden chop-houses, he could scarcely eat for the thoughts that
surged throug