London was too much to go into. His attention was diverted by a
newspaper placard.

"Ah," said he, "another earthquake, is it not?"

"Collapse of Australia" stared from that vermilion placard. It began
to dawn on me that I had undertaken rather a large order in showing
this Oriental London life.

"And you have not shown me any of your _literati_ yet, or any of their
houses."

We were stopped in a block of omnibuses and cabs. A line of
sandwich-men were straggling along between vehicles and the curb. One
of them stopped just by our cab; the rain was trickling down his nose;
he looked as dismal as the weather. I could not resist the temptation
of explaining that these were some of our _literati_ undergoing
punishment for some of the books or plays they had written. In China
the crime is set forth on a board hung on the neck of the criminal,
called the _cangue_. It was only a very mild surprise he showed when I
gave him the names of the line of sandwich-men. "How like the head of
your Shakespeare!" he said of one.

We were received at the hotel door by a brass-bound German in the
undress uniform of a British admiral, who pays the hotel L500 for
receiving tips. The rooms and corridors of the big building did not
look hospitably cheering. There were no fires in the grates, because,
being June, the weather ought to have been warm; and the electric
lights were not turned on, because, being daytime, there ought to have
been light. He liked the smoking-room. "It is more like one of our big
tea-houses," he said. "Men do business here," pointing to a man with a
sheaf of papers talking earnestly to another beside him.

"Yes, that is a company promoter."

"What is a company promoter?"

The nearest definition that occurred was, "A man who sells something
he hasn't got to another who does not want to buy it."

"I think London is a very interesting city," he said.

XVIII

TIRED

It was the fag end of the week in the Dingy City. A heavy weight of
dusty grey cloud lay oppressively inert, vaguely resting on the house
and tree tops, and underneath the cloud the air seemed stagnantly
confined; in its lowest strata people had been breathing it all
day--all the week, in fact--in and out of their lungs, so that it was
no wonder it felt tired and second-hand and used up.

The air-thirst of their lungs had impelled those who were energetic to
go away to where fresh air was to be breathed; but the very tired, and
those w