h he passed were populated by domestic servants and
tradesmen's boys. He saw white-capped girls cleaning door-knobs or
windows, or running along the streets, like escaped nuns, or staring in
soft meditation from bedroom windows. And the tradesmen's boys were
continually leaping in and out of carts, or off and on tricycles, busily
distributing food and drink, as though Putney had been a beleaguered
city. It was extremely interesting and mysterious--and what made it the
most mysterious was that the oligarchy of superior persons for whom
these boys and girls so assiduously worked, remained invisible. He
passed a newspaper shop and found his customary delight in the placards.
This morning the _Daily Illustrated_ announced nothing but: "Portrait of
a boy aged 12 who weighs 20 stone." And the _Record_ whispered in
scarlet: "What the German said to the King. Special." The _Journal_
cried: "Surrey's glorious finish." And the _Courier_ shouted: "The
Unwritten Law in the United States. Another Scandal."

Not for gold would he have gone behind these placards to the organs
themselves; he preferred to gather from the placards alone what wonders
of yesterday the excellent staid _Telegraph_ had unaccountably missed.
But in the _Financial Times_ he saw: "Cohoon's Annual Meeting. Stormy
Scenes." And he bought the _Financial Times_ and put it into his pocket
for his wife, because she had an interest in Cohoon's Brewery, and he
conceived the possibility of her caring to glance at the report.

_The Simple Joy of Life_

After crossing the South-Western Railway he got into the Upper Richmond
Road, a thoroughfare which always diverted and amused him. It was such a
street of contrasts. Any one could see that, not many years before, it
had been a sacred street, trod only by feet genteel, and made up of
houses each christened with its own name and each standing in its own
garden. And now energetic persons had put churches into it, vast red
things with gigantic bells, and large drapery shops, with blouses at
six-and-eleven, and court photographers, and banks, and cigar-stores,
and auctioneers' offices. And all kinds of omnibuses ran along it. And
yet somehow it remained meditative and superior. In every available
space gigantic posters were exhibited. They all had to do with food or
pleasure. There were York hams eight feet high, that a regiment could
not have eaten in a month; shaggy and ferocious oxen peeping out of
monstrous teacups in t