t of hot tea, for sevenpence, when he burst into my words with--

"The South London Road, laddie? You ask _me_ if _I_ know the South
London Road? Come again, boy, come again; I don't get you." He lay back
in his chair, and recited, with a half-smile: "The--South--London--Road!
God, what sights for the hungry! Let's see--how do they go? Good Pull Up
For Carmen on the right. Far Famed Eel Pie and Tripe House opposite.
Palace Restaurant, Noted For Sausages, next. Then The Poor Man's Friend.
Then Bingo's Fish Bar. Coffee Caravanserai farther up. And--Lord!--S. P.
and O. everywhere for threepence-halfpenny. What a sight, boy! Ever
walked down it at the end of a day without a meal and without a penny? I
should say so. And nearly flung bricks through the windows--what?
Sausages swimming in bubbling gravy. Or tucked in, all snug and comfy,
with a blanket of mashed. Tomatoes frying themselves, and whining for
the fun of it. Onions singing. Saveloys entrenched in pease-pudding.
Jellied eels and stewed tripe and eel-pies at twopence, threepence, and
sixpence. Irish stew at sevenpence on the Come-Again style--as many
follows as you want for the same money. _Do_ I know the South London
Road? Does a duck know the water?"

We talked of other streets in London which are filled with shop-windows
glamorous of prospect for the gourmet; and not only for the gourmet, but
for all simple-minded folk. Georgie talked of the toy-shops of Holborn.
He made gestures expressive of paradisiacal delight. He is one of the
few people I know who can sympathize with my own childishness. He never
snubs my enthusiasms or my discoveries. Other friends sit heavily upon
me when I display emotion over things like shops, taxicabs, dinners,
drinks, railway journeys, music-halls, and cry, "Tommy--for the Lord's
sake, _shut up!_" But Georgie understands. He understands why I cackle
with delight when the new Stores Catalogue arrives. (By the way, if ever
I made a list of the Hundred Best Books, number one would be an
Illustrated Stores Catalogue. What a wonderful bedside book it is! There
is surely nothing so provocative to the sluggish imagination. Open it
where you will, it fires an unending train of dreams. It is so full of
thousands of things which you simply must have and for which you have no
use at all, that you finally put it down and write a philosophic essay
on The Vanity of Human Wishes, and thereby earn three guineas.
Personally, I have found over a doze