ree
Tuns," then call at "The Blue Posts," look in at "The Dog and Fire-irons,"
and finish up at "The Shakespeare's Head." What was it we used to troll?--

'From tavern to tavern
Youth passes along,
With an armful of girl
And a heart-full of song.'

'Hush!' I cried in terror; 'it is impossible. I cannot. Come to my club
instead.' But he shook his head.

I persuaded him to have some Chianti at last, but he drank it without
spirit, and thus we sat far into the night talking of old days.

Before he went I made him a definite offer--he must have bewitched me, I
am sure--I offered him no less than L5000 and a share in the business for
the sprig of almond-blossom the ridiculous young pagan carried in his hat.

And will you believe me? He declined the offer.

THE PATHETIC FLOURISH

The dash under the signature, the unnecessary rat-tat of the visitor, the
extravagant angle of the hat in bowing, the extreme unction in the voice,
the business man's importance, the strut of the cock, the swagger of the
bad actor, the long hair of the poet, the Salvation bonnet, the blue shirt
of the Socialist: against all these, and a hundred examples of the swagger
of unreflecting life, did a little brass knocker in Gray's Inn warn me the
other evening. I had knocked as no one should who is not a postman, with
somewhat of a flourish. I had plainly said, in its metallic
reverberations, that I was somebody. As I left my friends, I felt the
knocker looking at me, and when I came out into the great square, framing
the heavens like an astronomical chart, the big stars repeated the lesson
with thousand-fold iteration. How they seemed to nudge each other and
twinkle among themselves at the poor ass down there, who actually took
himself and his doings so seriously as to flourish, even on a little brass
knocker.

Yes, I had once again forgotten Jupiter. How many hundred times was he
bigger than the earth? Never mind, there he was, bright as crystal, for me
to measure my importance against! The street-lamps did their best, I
observed, to brave it out, and the electric lights in Holborn seemed
certainly to have the best of it--as cheap jewellery is gaudiest in its
glitter. One could much more easily believe that all these hansoms with
their jewelled eyes, these pretty, saucily frocked women with theirs, this
busy glittering milky way of human life was the enduring, and those dimmed
uncertain points up yonder but the refl