ispelled so soon as the place is devoted
to permanent exhibitions of New Zealand pippins, Rhodesian tobacco,
Australian mutton, Canadian snow-shoes, and other glories of
Empire--might surely not be asked in vain to'--but I deleted
that sentence, and tried another in another vein. My desire to be
straightforward did but topple me into excess of statement. My sorrow
for the Adelphi came out as sentimentality, my anger against the
authorities as vulgar abuse. Only the urgency of my cause upheld me. I
would get my letter done somehow and post it. But there flitted through
my mind that horrid doubt which has flitted through the minds of so many
choleric old gentlemen in the course of the past hundred years and more:
'Will The Times put my letter in?'

If The Times wouldn't, what then? At least my conscience would be clear:
I should have done what I could to save my beloved quarter. But the
process of doing it was hard and tedious, and I was glad of the little
respite presented by the thought that I must, before stating my case
thoroughly, revisit Adam Street itself, to gauge precisely the extent
of the mischief threatened there. On my way to the Strand I met an old
friend, one of my links with whom is his love of the Adams' work. He
had not read the news, and I am sorry to say that I, in my selfish
agitation, did not break it to him gently. Rallying, he accompanied me
on my sombre quest.

I had forgotten there was a hosier's shop next to the Tivoli, at the
corner of the right-hand side of Adam Street. We turned past it, and
were both of us rather surprised that there were other shops down that
side. They ought never to have been allowed there; but there they were;
and of course, I felt, it was the old facades above them that really
counted. We gazed meanwhile at the facades on the left-hand side,
feasting our eyes on the proportions of the pilasters, the windows;
the old seemly elegance of it all; the greatness of the manner with the
sweet smallness of the scale it wrought on.

'Well,' I said, turning abruptly away, 'to business! Thirty feet--how
much, about, is that? My friend moved to the exact corner of the Strand,
and then, steadily, methodically, with his eyes to the pavement, walked
thirty toe-to-heal paces down Adam Street.

'This,' he said, 'is where the corner of the Tivoli would come'--not
'will come,' observe; I thanked him for that. He passed on, measuring
out the thirty additional feet. There was in his deme