ore human significance, a significance
tearful and uncomfortably symbolic? Or are you so entirely that tailor's
fraction of manhood, the _fin de siecle_ type, that your ninth part does
not include a heart and the lachrymal gland?

You suspect him at once as you squeeze past his legs to your stall, for he
cannot quite conceal the hissing twinge of gout; and you are hardly seated
ere you are quite sure that a long night of living for others is before
you.

'You hardly would think it, perhaps,' he begins, 'but I saw Charles Young
play the part--yes, in 1824.'

If you are young and innocent, you think--'What an interesting old
gentleman!' and you have vague ideas of pumping him for reminiscences to
turn into copy. Poor boy, you soon find that there is no need of pumping
on your part. He is entirely self-acting, and the wells of his
autobiography are as deep as the foundations of the world.

If you are more experienced, you make a quick frantic effort to escape;
you try to nip the bud of his talk with a frosty 'Indeed!' and edge away,
calling upon your programme to cover you. You never so much as turn the
sixteenth part of an eye in his direction, for even as the oyster-man,
should the poor mollusc heave the faintest sigh, is inside with his knife
in the twinkling of a star; even as a beetle has but to think of moving
its tiniest leg for the bird to swoop upon him,--even so will the least
muscular interest in your neighbour give you bound hand and foot into his
power.

But really and truly escape is hopeless. You are beyond the reach of any
salvage agency whatsoever. Better make up your mind to be absolutely rude
or absolutely kind: and the man who can find in his heart to be the former
must have meeting eyebrows, and will sooner or later be found canonised in
wax at Madame Tussaud's. To be the latter, however, is by no means easy.
It is one of the most poignant forms of self-sacrifice attained by the
race. In that, at least, you have some wintry consolation; and the
imaginative vignette of yourself wearing the martyr's crown is a pretty
piece of sacred art.

If you wished to make a bag of old playgoers, or meditated a sort of
Bartholomew's Eve, a revival of _Hamlet_ would, of course, be the occasion
you would select for your purpose: for the old playgoer, so to speak,
collects Hamlets. At a first night of _Hamlet_ every sixth stall-holder is
a Dr. Doran up to date, his mind a portfolio of old prints.

That is why a