e was saved by a poultry crate: I had no luck that day.

At Ryde the guard, by superhuman effort, contrived to keep us a carriage
to ourselves. I gave him a shilling, because I did not know what else
to do. I would have made it half-a-sovereign if he had put eight other
passengers in with us. At every station people came to the window to
look in at us.

I handed Minnie over to her father on Ventnor platform; and I took the
first train the next morning, to London. I felt I did not want to see
her again for a little while; and I felt convinced she could do without
a visit from me. Our next meeting took place the week before her
marriage.

"Where are you going to spend your honeymoon?" I asked her; "in the New
Forest?"

"No," she replied; "nor in the Isle of Wight."

To enjoy the humour of an incident one must be at some distance from it
either in time or relationship. I remember watching an amusing scene in
Whitefield Street, just off Tottenham Court Road, one winter's Saturday
night. A woman--a rather respectable looking woman, had her hat only
been on straight--had just been shot out of a public-house. She was very
dignified, and very drunk. A policeman requested her to move on. She
called him "Fellow," and demanded to know of him if he considered that
was the proper tone in which to address a lady. She threatened to report
him to her cousin, the Lord Chancellor.

"Yes; this way to the Lord Chancellor," retorted the policeman. "You
come along with me;" and he caught hold of her by the arm.

She gave a lurch, and nearly fell. To save her the man put his arm round
her waist. She clasped him round the neck, and together they spun
round two or three times; while at the very moment a piano-organ at the
opposite corner struck up a waltz.

"Choose your partners, gentlemen, for the next dance," shouted a wag,
and the crowd roared.

I was laughing myself, for the situation was undeniably comical, the
constable's expression of disgust being quite Hogarthian, when the sight
of a child's face beneath the gas-lamp stayed me. Her look was so full
of terror that I tried to comfort her.

"It's only a drunken woman," I said; "he's not going to hurt her."

"Please, sir," was the answer, "it's my mother."

Our joke is generally another's pain. The man who sits down on the
tin-tack rarely joins in the laugh.

ON THE MINDING OF OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS

I walked one bright September morning in the Strand. I love London