one with glancing rain-pools. "Come, this is better,"
thought the lawyer to himself, and he walked on eastward, lending a
pleased ear to the wheels and the million footfalls of the city.

Near the end of the King's Road he remembered his brandy and soda, and
entered a flaunting public-house. A good many persons were present, a
waterman from a cab-stand, half a dozen of the chronically unemployed, a
gentleman (in one corner) trying to sell aesthetic photographs out of a
leather case to another and very youthful gentleman with a yellow
goatee, and a pair of lovers debating some fine shade (in the other).
But the centrepiece and great attraction was a little old man, in a
black, ready-made surtout, which was obviously a recent purchase. On the
marble table in front of him, beside a sandwich and a glass of beer,
there lay a battered forage-cap. His hand fluttered abroad with
oratorical gestures; his voice, naturally shrill, was plainly tuned to
the pitch of the lecture-room; and by arts, comparable to those of the
Ancient Mariner, he was now holding spell-bound the barmaid, the
waterman, and four of the unemployed.

"I have examined all the theatres in London," he was saying; "and pacing
the principal entrances, I have ascertained them to be ridiculously
disproportionate to the requirements of their audiences. The doors
opened the wrong way--I forget at this moment which it is, but have a
note of it at home; they were frequently locked during the performance,
and when the auditorium was literally thronged with English people. You
have probably not had my opportunities of comparing distant lands; but I
can assure you this has been long ago recognised as a mark of
aristocratic government. Do you suppose, in a country really
self-governed, such abuses could exist? Your own intelligence, however
uncultivated, tells you they could not. Take Austria, a country even
possibly more enslaved than England. I have myself conversed with one of
the survivors of the Ring Theatre, and though his colloquial German was
not very good, I succeeded in gathering a pretty clear idea of his
opinion of the case. But, what will perhaps interest you still more,
here is a cutting on the subject from a Vienna newspaper, which I will
now read to you, translating as I go. You can see for yourselves; it is
printed in the German character." And he held the cutting out for
verification, much as a conjurer passes a trick orange along the front
bench.

"Hu