street beggars, and that the average beggar
probably earns more than the average working man. There is talk of the
beggars forming a union. A beggars' strike would be a fearsome thing.

* * *

I want to be a diplomat
And with the envoys stand,
A-wetting of my whistle in
A desiccated land.

The London Busman Story.

_I.--As George Meredith might have related it._

"Stop!" she signalled.

The appeal was comprehensible, and the charioteer, assiduously obliging,
fell to posture of checking none too volant steeds.

You are to suppose her past meridian, nearer the twilight of years,
noteworthy rather for matter than manner; and her visage, comparable to
the beef of England's glory, well you wot. This one's descent was
mincing, hesitant, adumbrating dread of disclosures--these expectedly
ample, columnar, massive. The day was gusty, the breeze prankant;
petticoats, bandbox, umbrella were to be conciliated, managed if
possible; no light task, you are to believe.

"'Urry, marm!"

The busman's tone was patiently admonitory, dispassionate. A veteran in
his calling, who had observed the ascending and descending of a myriad
matrons, in playful gales.

"'Urry, marm!"

The fellow was without illusions; he had reviewed more twinkling columns
than a sergeant of drill. Indifference his note, leaning to ennui. He
said so, bluntly, piquantly, in half a dozen memorable words, fetching
yawn for period.

The lady jerked an indignant exclamation, and completed, rosily
precipitate, her passage to the pave.

_II.--As Henry James might have written it._

We, let me ask, what are we, the choicer of spirits as well as the more
frugal if not the undeservedly impoverished, what, I ask, are we to do
now that the hansom has disappeared, as they say, from the London
streets and the taxicab so wonderfully yet extravagantly taken its
place? Is there, indeed, else left for us than the homely but hallowed
'bus, as we abbreviatedly yet all so affectionately term it--the 'bus of
one's earlier days, when London was new to the unjaded sensorium and
"Europe" was so wonderfully, so beautifully dawning on one's so avid and
sensitive consciousness?

And fate, which has left us the 'bus--but oh, in what scant and shabby
measure!--has left us, too, the weather that so densely yet so
congruously "goes with it"--the weather adequately enough denoted by the
thick atmosphere, the slimy pavements, the omnipres