people of the
largest city in the world might reasonably expect. They might expect
to have as good facilities for getting about as the people of the most
progressive cities in the world; they might expect to have the power
to speak when they will with the same quickness, cheapness, and
facility as people of other cities. But there is a dull feeling of
resigned apathy about them. They will not insist on making any one
"get a move on" them to get these things done; will no more think of
hustling themselves than a cab-horse in a growler hired by the hour.

If London may be considered the head--the brain of the Empire--the
blood-circulation of that brain is surely of vital importance. When
keen competitors seize every time-saving, labour-saving weapon as it
is offered to help them in the conquest of trade, can we afford to do
without them? The business methods of twenty years ago will not do for
to-day, still less will they do for twenty years to come. The methods
which our competitors are practising are what will tell, and they
cannot be imitated and acquired in a hurry when their importance will
become suddenly alarmingly apparent. I think the position is far more
serious than the stay-at-home Englishman realises. Perhaps from these
passing years the future historian will get material for the opening
chapters of his work on "British Trade: its Decline and Fall."

XX

THE LAND OF THE EVENING CALM

It is difficult to think this morning that it was only last evening I
left London. Lying on one's back on a soft carpet of pine spirules on
the slope of the hill, the deep green of the water in the harbour
shows through the pine branches. There is a plumage of bracken around
wonderful green feathers, that are rising on their slender stems from
the thick brown carpet of nature's plush, which hushes one's footsteps
through the wood and makes them noiseless, except when one treads on a
crisp tory top. There is a delightful hush under this cool roof
pillared by the brown tree-trunks, but it is not silence. There is a
soft hum that comes ceaselessly to one's ear, sometimes anear,
sometimes afar, from one knows not where, from bees, perhaps, busy
amongst the hurts or honeysuckle just below. Up above a wood-pigeon
keeps cooing that ceaseless question, or is it a question, or the
plaint call of his pigeon heart for love? or has he lost his love, and
croons a mourning for her? Distinct from and louder than the murmur of
the b