r by poem published
in the first number: "The Song of the Pen."
Choosing a title for the paper cost much thought. Driven to despair,
they called it _Good Humour_.
STORY THE THIRD--Grindley Junior drops into the Position of Publisher
Few are the ways of the West Central district that have changed less
within the last half-century than Nevill's Court, leading from Great New
Street into Fetter Lane. Its north side still consists of the same
quaint row of small low shops that stood there--doing perhaps a little
brisker business--when George the Fourth was King; its southern side of
the same three substantial houses each behind a strip of garden, pleasant
by contrast with surrounding grimness, built long ago--some say before
Queen Anne was dead.
Out of the largest of these, passing through the garden, then well cared
for, came one sunny Sunday morning, some fifteen years before the
commencement proper of this story, one Solomon Appleyard, pushing in
front of him a perambulator. At the brick wall surmounted by wooden
railings that divides the garden from the court, Solomon paused, hearing
behind him the voice of Mrs. Appleyard speaking from the doorstep.
"If I don't see you again until dinner-time, I'll try and get on without
you, understand. Don't think of nothing but your pipe and forget the
child. And be careful of the crossings."
Mrs. Appleyard retired into the darkness. Solomon, steering the
perambulator carefully, emerged from Nevill's Court without accident. The
quiet streets drew Solomon westward. A vacant seat beneath the shade
overlooking the Long Water in Kensington Gardens invited to rest.
"Piper?" suggested a small boy to Solomon. "_Sunday Times_, _'Server_?"
"My boy," said Mr. Appleyard, speaking slowly, "when you've been mewed up
with newspapers eighteen hours a day for six days a week, you can do
without 'em for a morning. Take 'em away. I want to forget the smell of
'em."
Solomon, having assured himself that the party in the perambulator was
still breathing, crossed his legs and lit his pipe.
"Hezekiah!"
The exclamation had been wrung from Solomon Appleyard by the approach of
a stout, short man clad in a remarkably ill-fitting broad-cloth suit.
"What, Sol, my boy?"
"It looked like you," said Solomon. "And then I said to myself: 'No;
surely it can't be Hezekiah; he'll be at chapel.'"
"You run about," said Hezekiah, addressing a youth of some four summers
he ha
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