,
whatever its kind might be. Where is the schoolboy to-day who can
realise the pleasurable excitement of approaching such a caged bear in a
public thoroughfare close enough to test the beast's good nature under
circumstances of provocation, and his own adroitness in making good his
retreat in case of retaliation?

In the streets and alleys of St. Giles's I was first initiated into the
horrors of warfare, especially into the kind of warfare considered quite
legitimate in those days. A quarrel first;--passions roused--words
leading to blows. Coats off, fists clenched, and there, whilst two
savages were trying the issue as to which could knock the other into a
jelly, or, if luck would have it, into a coffin, we, the enlightened
public, formed a ring and stood round, nominally to see fair-play, but
virtually to back one or the other of the combatants, goading both on to
fight like devils, and finally rejoicing over the survival of the
fittest.

That kind of thing has been stopped in St. Giles's, but the devil
doesn't mind; there is so much legitimate warfare, slaughter and
massacre nowadays on a larger scale, that he is said to admit himself
that he gets over and above the share he originally claimed; and as for
the ring, why, that has grown apace; thanks to scientific progress, it
is iron-bound now with telegraphic wires, and is known by the euphonious
name of "the Concert of Europe."

How good man is, and how tender in his concern for his brother! More
than once I saw him pick up the battered jelly and carry it with
fraternal solicitude to the neighbouring chemist. How good we all are,
stitching at Red Cross badges, chartering ambulances, and sending the
hat round at the Mansion House and elsewhere to save the surviving
fittest from starvation!

The question of woman's rights--and wrongs--was also occasionally raised
and illustrated for my benefit in one or the other of the Seven Dials,
the object lesson sometimes delaying me and getting me into trouble for
being late at the _hic-haec-hoc_ business in the Strand. I particularly
recollect a female fiend rushing after her wretched husband, who fled
down the street from her, and from the blood-stained poker she savagely
brandished.

But there were quieter corners too, not far from the lairs of the
vicious, a dear old printshop for one, just by St. Giles' Church. The
most tempting pictures were displayed in the windows: coloured prints of
stage-coaches, cockatoos, pri