assion of rage by this blatant ribaldry, which
affected me like the laughter of a skeleton, that I rushed from the car,
with the intention, I believe, of seeking stones to stone it: but no
stones were there: and I had to stand impotently enduring that rape of
my eyes, its victoriously-dogged iteration, its taunting leer, its
Drink Roboral--D, R, I, N, K R, O, B, O, R, A, L.

It was one of those electrical spelling-advertisements, worked by a
small motor commutator driven by a works-motor, and I had now set it
going: for on some night before that Sabbath of doom the chemist must
have set it to work, but finding the works abandoned, had not troubled
to shut it down again. At any rate, this thing stopped my work for that
day, for when I went to shut down the works it was night; and I drove to
the place which I had made my home in sullen and weary mood: for I knew
that Roboral would not cure the least of all my sores.

* * * * *

The next morning I awoke in quite another frame of mind, disposed to
idle, and let things go. After rising, dressing, washing in cold diluted
rose-water, and descending to the _salle-a-manger_, where I had laid my
morning-meal the previous evening, I promenaded an hour the only one of
these long sombrous tufted corridors in which there were not more than
two dead, though behind the doors on either hand, all of which I had
locked, I knew that they lay in plenty. When I was warmed, I again went
down, looked into my motor, got three cylinders from one of a number of
motors standing near, lit up, and drove away--to Woolwich, as I thought
at first: but instead of crossing the river by Blackfriars, I went more
eastward; and having passed from Holborn into Cheapside, which was
impassable, unless I crawled, was about to turn, when I noticed a
phonograph-shop: into this I got by a side-door, suddenly seized by
quite a curiosity to hear what I might hear. I took a good one with
microphone diaphragm, and a number of record-cylinders in a
brass-handled box, and I put them into the car, for there was still a
very strong peach-odour in this closed shop, which displeased me. I then
proceeded southward and westward through by-streets, seeking some
probable house into which to go from the rough cold winds, when I saw
the Parliament-house, and thither, turning river-ward by Westminster
Hall to Palace Yard, I went, and with my two parcels, one weighting each
arm, walked into this old