of his own originality. He evidently felt that there was
something individual about him, and apparently relied with confidence on
his friend not addressing a third dandy by mistake for him. I hope he had
his name safe in his hat.

Looking at these three examples of Nature's love of repeating herself, I
said to myself: Somewhere in heaven stands a great stencil, and at each
sweep of the cosmic brush a million dandies are born, each one alike as a
box of collars. Indeed, I felt that this stencil process had been employed
in the manufacture of every single person in that omnibus: two middle-aged
matrons, each of whom seemed to think that having given birth to six
children was an indisputable claim to originality; two elderly business
men to correspond; a young miss carrying music and wearing eye-glasses;
and a clergyman discussing stocks with one of the business men; I alone in
my corner being, of course, the one occupant for whom Nature had been at
the expense of casting a special mould, and at the extravagance of
breaking it.

Presently a matron and a business man alighted, and two dainty young
women, evidently of artistic tendencies, joined the Hammersmith pilgrims.
One saw at a glance that they were very sure of their originality. There
were no inverted commas around their pretty young heads, bless them! But
then Queen Anne houses are as much on a pattern as more commonplace
structures, and Bedford Parkians are already being manufactured by
celestial stencil. What I specially noticed about them was their
plagiarised voices--curious, yearning things, evidently intended to
suggest depths of infinite passion, controlled by many a wild and weary
past,

'Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite souls that yearn'--

the kind of voice, you know, in which Socialist actresses yearn out
passages from 'The Cenci,' feeling that they do a fearful thing. The voice
began, I believe, with Miss Ellen Terry. With her, though, it is charming,
for it is, we feel, the voice of real emotion. There are real tears in it.
It is her own. But with these ladies, who were discussing the last
'Independent' play, it was so evidently a stop pulled out by
affectation--the _vox inhumana_, one might say, for it is a voice unlike
anything else to be found in the four elements. It has its counterpart in
the imitators of Mr. Beerbohm Tree--young actors who likewise endeavour to
make up for the lack of anything like dramatic passion by pretendi