married. It is
characteristic of the fine sentimentality which underlies the surface
harshness of the inhabitants of the Five Towns that, though No. 54
Machin Street was duly transferred to Ezra Brunt, the chemist retiring
from business, he has never rebuilt it to accord with the rest of his
premises. In all its shabbiness it stands between the other big dazzling
shops as a reminding monument.

* * * * *

PHANTOM

I

The heart of the Five Towns--that undulating patch of England covered
with mean streets, and dominated by tall smoking chimneys, whence are
derived your cups and saucers and plates, some of your coal, and a
portion of your iron--is Hanbridge, a borough larger and busier than its
four sisters, and even more grimy and commonplace than they. And the
heart of Hanbridge is probably the offices of the Five Towns Banking
Company, where the last trace of magic and romance is beaten out of
human existence, and the meaning of life is expressed in balances,
deposits, percentages, and overdrafts--especially overdrafts. In a fine
suite of rooms on the first floor of the bank building resides Mr.
Lionel Woolley, the manager, with his wife May and their children. Mrs.
Woolley is compelled to change her white window-curtains once a week
because of the smuts. Mr. Woolley, forty-five, rather bald, frigidly
suave, positive, egotistic, and pontifical, is a specimen of the man of
business who is nothing else but a man of business. His career has been
a calculation from which sentiment is entirely omitted; he has no
instinct for the things which cannot be defined and assessed. Scarcely a
manufacturer in Hanbridge but who inimically and fearfully regards Mr.
Woolley as an amazing instance of a creature without a soul; and the
absence of soul in a fellow-man must be very marked indeed before a
Hanbridge manufacturer notices it. There are some sixty thousand
immortal souls in Hanbridge, but they seldom attract attention.

Yet Mr. Woolley was once brought into contact with the things which
cannot be defined and assessed; once he stood face to face with some
strange visible resultant of those secret forces that lie beyond the
human ken. And, moreover, the adventure affected the whole of his
domestic life. The wonder and the pathos of the story lie in the fact
that Nature, prodigal though she is known to be, should have wasted the
rare and beautiful visitation on just Mr. Woolley. Mr. Wooll