s now
handed to her chair and goes round by Gregory's to read a bit. She is
flounced to the width of the passage. Indeed, until the fashion shall
abate, those more solid authors that are set up in the rear of the shop,
must remain during her visits in general neglect. Though she hold herself
against the shelf and tilt her hoops, it would not be possible to pass. She
is absorbed in a book of the softer sort, and she flips its pages against
her lap-dog's nose.

But now behold the student coming up the street! He is clad in shining
black. He is thin of shank as becomes a scholar. He sags with knowledge. He
hungers after wisdom. He comes opposite the bookshop. It is but coquetry
that his eyes seek the window of the tobacconist. His heart, you may be
sure, looks through the buttons at his back. At last he turns. He pauses on
the curb. Now desire has clutched him. He jiggles his trousered shillings.
He treads the gutter. He squints upon the rack. He lights upon a treasure.
He plucks it forth. He is unresolved whether to buy it or to spend the
extra shilling on his dinner. Now all you cooks together, to save your
business, rattle your pans to rouse him! If within these ancient buildings
there are onions ready peeled--quick!--throw them in the skillet that the
whiff may come beneath his nose! Chance trembles and casts its vote--eenie
meenie--down goes the shilling--he has bought the book. Tonight he will
spread it beneath his candle. Feet may beat a snare of pleasure on the
pavement, glad cries may pipe across the darkness, a fiddle may scratch its
invitation--all the rumbling notes of midnight traffic will tap in vain
their summons upon his window.

Any Stick Will Do To Beat A Dog

Reader, possibly on one of your country walks you have come upon a man with
his back against a hedge, tormented by a fiend in the likeness of a dog.
You yourself, of course, are not a coward. You possess that cornerstone of
virtue, a love for animals. If at your heels a dog sniffs and growls, you
humor his mistake, you flick him off and proceed with unbroken serenity. It
is scarcely an interlude to your speculation on the market. Or if you work
upon a sonnet and are in the vein, your thoughts, despite the beast, run
unbroken to a rhyme. But pity this other whose heart is less stoutly
wrapped! He has gone forth on a holiday to take the country air, to thrust
himself into the freer wind, to poke with his stick for such signs of
Spring as may