r of a class, but I soon discovered that the top-hat
was not the property of a class. It was the property of rogues, clerks,
theatrical agents, damned seducers, poor men, nobles, and others. In
fact, it was the universal rigging. It was the only hat; all other forms
might as well be named ham, or chops, or oysters. I retracted my
admiration of the young man because he may have been merely a rogue.

CHAPTER VI.

There was a window whereat an enterprising man by dodging two placards
and a calendar was entitled to view a young woman. She was dejectedly
writing in a large book. She was ultimately induced to open the window a
trifle. "What nyme, please?" she said wearily. I was surprised to hear
this language from her. I had expected to be addressed on a submarine
topic. I have seen shell fishes sadly writing in large books at the
bottom of a gloomy aquarium who could not ask me what was my "nyme."

At the end of the hall there was a grim portal marked "Lift." I pressed
an electric button and heard an answering tinkle in the heavens. There
was an upholstered settle near at hand, and I discovered the reason. A
deer-stalking peace drooped upon everything, and in it a man could
invoke the passing of a lazy pageant of twenty years of his life.

The dignity of a coffin being lowered into a grave surrounded the
ultimate appearance of the lift. The expert we in America call the
elevator-boy stepped from the car, took three paces forward, faced to
attention, and saluted. This elevator-boy could not have been less than
sixty years of age; a great white beard streamed towards his belt. I saw
that the lift had been longer on its voyage than I had suspected.

Later in our upward progress a natural event would have been an
establishment of social relations. Two enemies imprisoned together
during the still hours of a balloon journey would, I believe, suffer a
mental amalgamation. The overhang of a common fate, a great principal
fact, can make an equality and a truce between any pair. Yet, when I
disembarked, a final survey of the grey beard made me recall that I had
failed even to ask the boy whether he had not taken probably three trips
on this lift.

My windows overlooked simply a great sea of night, in which were
swimming little gas fishes.

CHAPTER VII.

I have of late been led to wistfully reflect that many of the
illustrators are very clever. In an impatience, which was denoted by a
certain economy of appare