--twenty years ago? What a
NIGHT! Did he remember how Phil May had squirted the syphon down poor
old Pitcher's neck? And Clarence ... Clarence was fairly all out that
night--what? And next morning--when they met Jimmy coming down the steps
of the Garrick Club--_what?_

To all of which Dusty replied: "Ah, yes, sir. I should say so. That's
the idea, sir. Those was the days!" Then the dinner came along, and we
started on it. I prefer to be attended by Jumbo. Dusty's service of
steak-pudding is rather in the nature of a spar. Jumbo, on the other
hand, places your plate before you with the air of one doing something
sacramental.

While we ate we looked out on the sad lights of Homerton, and the
shadowy arches and cringing houses. A queer place, whose flavour I have
never rightly been able to catch. It is nondescript, but full of
suggestion. Some day, probably, its message will burst upon me, and I
expect it will be something quite obvious. The shadow of history hangs
over it all. Six hundred years ago, in the velvet dusk of a summer
night, Sir John Froissart galloped this way, by plaguey bad roads, and
he beguiled the tedium of his journey by making an excellent new
pastourelle. But you will hear no echo of this delicious song to-day:
that lies buried for ever in the yellow mists of the MS. Room at the
British Museum. Motor-'buses will snatch you from St. James's Palace,
dash you through the City, and land you, within twenty minutes,
breathless and bewildered, in the very spot where Sir John climbed from
his steed. There is little now that is naughty and light-hearted. There
is much that is sombrely wicked, and there are numbers of unsweetened
ladies attached to the churches; and if it should chance to be one of
your bad days, you may hear, as you stand musing upon the fringe of the
Downs, in place of Sir John's insouciant numbers, "Mein liebe Schwann
..." and other trifles rendered by gramophone at an opposite villa. But
if ever it had any charms, they are gone. We may read in our histories
that about these parts kings and princes, soldiers and wits, counselled,
carolled, and caroused: but you would never think it. Too soon, I fancy,
the music and the wine were done, the last word said, and the guests
sent their several ways into the night. For nothing remains--nothing of
that atmosphere which grows around every spot where people have loved,
and suffered, and hated, and died; only Jumbo and a nameless spirit
remain.

It