in inevitable
question grew more insistent upon a reply; and so, coming to one of
London's founts of wisdom and knowledge, I put it to him. "I suppose," I
said, indicating the various speakers with a semicircular gesture, "they
don't do all this for nothing?" The policeman closed one eye. "Not
they," he answered; "they've all got sympathizers somewhere."

Well, live and let live is a good maxim, thought I, and there surely
never was such a wonderful world as this, and so I came away; and it was
then that something occurred which (for everything so far has been sheer
prologue) led to these remarks. I was passing the crowd about one of the
gentlemen--the more brazenly confident one--who deny the existence of a
beneficent Creator, when the words, "Looking like a dying duck in a
thunderstorm," clanged out, followed by a roar of delighted laughter;
and in a flash I remembered precisely where I was when, forty and more
years ago, I first heard from a nursemaid that ancient simile and was so
struck by its humour that I added it to my childish repertory. And from
this recollection I passed on to ponder upon the melancholy truth that
originality will ever be an unpopular quality. For here were two or
three hundred people absolutely and hilariously satisfied with such a
battered and moth-eaten phrase, even to-day, and perfectly content that
the orator should have so little respect either for himself or for them
that he saw no disgrace in thus evading his duty and inventing something
new.

But was that his duty? That was my next thought; and a speech by that
eternally veracious type whom Mr. Pickwick met at Ipswich, and who, for
all his brief passage across the stage of literature, is more real than
many a prominent hero of many chapters, came to mind to answer it. I
refer to Mr. Peter Magnus, who, when Mr. Pickwick described Sam Weller
as not only his servant and almost friend, but an "original," replied in
these deathless words: "I am not fond of anything original; I don't like
it; don't see any necessity for it." And that's just it. The tribe of
Magnus is very large; it doesn't like originality, and doesn't see any
necessity for it--which, translated into the modern idiom, would run
"has no use for it." Hence the freethinker was right, and the longer he
continues to repose his faith in ancient comic _cliches_ the greater
will be his success.

And then I thought for the millionth time what an awful mistake it is to
be fastidi