'd have band-music here for
a couple of hours, three days of the week at the least; and down in the
East; and that forsaken North quarter of London; and the Baptist South
too. But just as those omnibus-wheels are the miserable music of this
London of ours, it 's only too sadly true that the people are in the
first rumble of the notion of the proper way to spend their lives. Now
you see the shop: Boyle and Luckwort: there.'

Victor looked. He threw his coat open, and pulled the waistcoat, and
swelled it, ahemming. 'That shop?' said he. And presently: 'Fenellan,
I'm not superstitious, I think. Now listen; I declare to you, on the day
of our drinking Old Veuve together last--you remember it,--I walked
home up this way across the square, and I was about to step into that
identical shop, for some household prescription in my pocket, having
forgotten Nataly's favourite City chemists Fenbird and Jay, when--I'm
stating a fact--I distinctly--I 'm sure of the shop--felt myself plucked
back by the elbow; pulled back the kind of pull when you have to put a
foot backward to keep your equilibrium.'

So does memory inspired by the sensations contribute an additional item
for the colouring of history.

He touched the elbow, showed a flitting face of crazed amazement in
amusement, and shrugged and half-laughed, dismissing the incident, as
being perhaps, if his hearer chose to have it so, a gem of the rubbish
tumbled into the dustcart out of a rather exceptional householder's
experience.

Fenellan smiled indulgently. 'Queer things happen. I recollect reading
in my green youth of a clergyman, who mounted a pulpit of the port where
he was landed after his almost solitary rescue from a burning ship at
midnight in mid-sea, to inform his congregation, that he had overnight
of the catastrophe a personal Warning right in his ear from a Voice,
when at his bed or bunk-side, about to perform the beautiful ceremony of
undressing: and the Rev. gentleman was to lie down in his full uniform,
not so much as to relieve himself of his boots, the Voice insisted
twice; and he obeyed it, despite the discomfort to his poor feet; and
he jumped up in his boots to the cry of Fire, and he got them
providentially over the scuffling deck straight at the first rush into
the boat awaiting them, and had them safe on and polished the day he
preached the sermon of gratitude for the special deliverance. There was
a Warning! and it might well be called, as he called