among the
young and old of all classes. I suppose I might go to that too. It
sounds comprehensive.

There seems no need to be dull in the suburbs. A man in a cart is still
crying coke down the street. Another desires to sell clothes-props. A
brace of lovers come stealing out of the Common through the mist,
careless of mud and soaking grass. I suppose people would say I'm too
old to make love on a County Council bench. In love's cash-books the
balance-sheet of years is kept with remorseless accuracy.

The foreign editors are waiting now in their silent room, and the
telegrams come to them from the ends of the world. They fold them in
packets together by countries or continents--the Indian stuff, the
Russian stuff, the Egyptian, Balkan, Austrian, South African, Persian,
Japanese, American, Spanish, and all the rest. They'll have pretty
nearly seven columns by this time, and the order will come
"Two-and-a-half foreign," Then the piecing and cutting will begin. One
of them sits in a telephone box with bands across his head, and repeats
a message from our Paris correspondent. Through our Paris man we can
talk with Berlin and Rome.

From this rising ground I can see the light of the city reflected on the
misty air, and somewhere mingled in that light are the big lamps down in
Fleet Street. The City's voice comes to me like a confused murmur
through a telephone when the words are unintelligible. The only distinct
sounds are the dripping of the moisture from the trees in suburban
gardens, and the voice of an old lady imploring her pet dog to return
from his evening walk.

The voice of all the world is now heard in that silent room. From moment
to moment news is coming of treaties and revolutions, of sultans deposed
and kings enthroned, of commerce and failures, of shipwrecks,
earthquakes, and explorations, of wars and flooded camps and sieges, of
intrigue, diplomacy, and assassination, of love, murder, revenge, and
all the public joy and sorrow and business of mankind. All the voices of
fear, hope, and lamentation echo in that silent little room; and maps
hang on the walls, and guide-books are always ready, for who knows
where the next event may come to pass upon this energetic little earth,
already twisting for a hundred million years around the sun?

The editor must be back by now. Calm and decisive, he takes his seat in
his own room, like the conductor of an orchestra preparing to raise his
baton now that the tuning-up