im, and
was, I think, the most superior person I have ever met. He sneered at
the _Saturday Review_ as the pet journal of the suburban literary club;
and at the _Athenaeum_ as the trade organ of the unsuccessful writer.
Thackeray, he considered, was fairly entitled to his position of
favourite author to the cultured clerk; and Carlyle he regarded as the
exponent of the earnest artisan. Living authors he never read, but this
did not prevent his criticising them contemptuously. The only
inhabitants of the nineteenth century that he ever praised were a few
obscure French novelists, of whom nobody but himself had ever heard. He
had his own opinion about God Almighty, and objected to Heaven on account
of the strong Clapham contingent likely to be found in residence there.
Humour made him sad, and sentiment made him ill. Art irritated him and
science bored him. He despised his own family and disliked everybody
else. For exercise he yawned, and his conversation was mainly confined
to an occasional shrug.

"Nobody liked him, but everybody respected him. One felt grateful to him
for his condescension in living at all.

"One summer, I was fishing over the Norfolk Broads, and on the Bank
Holiday, thinking I would like to see the London 'Arry in his glory, I
ran over to Yarmouth. Walking along the sea-front in the evening, I
suddenly found myself confronted by four remarkably choice specimens of
the class. They were urging on their wild and erratic career arm-in-arm.
The one nearest the road was playing an unusually wheezy concertina, and
the other three were bawling out the chorus of a music-hall song, the
heroine of which appeared to be 'Hemmer.'

"They spread themselves right across the pavement, compelling all the
women and children they met to step into the roadway. I stood my ground
on the kerb, and as they brushed by me something in the face of the one
with the concertina struck me as familiar.

"I turned and followed them. They were evidently enjoying themselves
immensely. To every girl they passed they yelled out, 'Oh, you little
jam tart!' and every old lady they addressed as 'Mar.' The noisiest and
the most vulgar of the four was the one with the concertina.

"I followed them on to the pier, and then, hurrying past, waited for them
under a gas-lamp. When the man with the concertina came into the light
and I saw him clearly I started. From the face I could have sworn it was
Joseph; but everything else