self: 'Spring--sit
down and write a poem!'"

He was then messenger at Thames Police Court, enjoying the friendship
and interest of all. He read me about a dozen of his lighter lyrics.
Here is one of the finer gems:--

How many a poet would like to have
Letters from royalty--prince, king, and queen;
But, like some insignificant ocean wave,
They are passed over, mayhap never seen.
But when I myself address good Royals,
And send them verses from my fertile brain,
See how they thank me very much for my flowing strain!

In proof of which he would dig out letters from King Edward, Queen
Alexandra, and Queen Mary.

One of these days I am going to do a book about those London characters
without reference to whom our daily newspapers are incomplete. I mean
people like the late lamented Craig, the poet of the Oval Cricket
Ground, Captain Hunnable, of Ilford, Mr. Algernon Ashton, Spiv. Bagster,
of Westminster, that gay farceur, "D. S. Windell," Stewart Gray, the
Nature enthusiast. But first and foremost must come--Spring Onions.

On the southern side of the quarter is Sidney Street, of sinister
memory. You remember the siege of Sidney Street? A great time for Little
Russia. You may remember how the police surrounded that little Fort
Chabrol. You may remember how the deadly aim of Peter the Painter and
his fellow-conspirators got home on the force again and again. You
remember how the police, in their helplessness against such fatalistic
defiance of their authority, appealed to Government, and how Government
sent down a detachment of the Irish Guards. There was a real Cabinet
Minister in it, too; he came down in his motor-car to superintend
manoeuvres and compliment gallant officers on their strategy. And yet,
in that great contest of four men versus the Rest of England, it was the
Rest of England that went down; for Fort Chabrol stood its ground and
quietly laughed. They were never beaten, they never surrendered. When
they had had enough, they just burnt the house over themselves, and ...
hara-kiri.... Of course, it was all very wicked; it is impossible to
justify them in any way. In Bayswater and all other haunts of unbridled
chastity they were tortured, burnt alive, stewed in oil, and submitted
to every conceivable penalty for their saucy effrontery. Yet, somehow,
there was a touch about it, this spectacle of four men defying the law
and order of the greatest country in the world, wh