The only possible comment on all this is that it is absurd, and that evidently Walt knew very little about the great Doctor. One of the curious things about Walt—and there is no man living who admires him more than we do—is that he requires to be forgiven more generously than any other great writer. There is no one who has ever done more grotesquely unpardonable things than he—and yet, such is the virtue of his great, saline simplicity, one always pardons them. As a book reviewer, to judge from the specimens rescued from the Eagle files by his latest editors, he was uniquely childish.

Noting the date of Walt's blast on Doctor Johnson (December 7, 1846), it is doubtful whether we can attribute the irresponsibility of his remarks to a desire to go swimming.

The editors of this collection venture the suggestion that the lighter pieces included show Walt as "not devoid of humour." We fear that Walt's waggishness was rather heavily shod. Here is a sample of his light-hearted paragraphing (the italics are his):—

It was in Leon Bazalgette's "Walt Whitman" that we learned of Walt's only really humorous achievement; and even then the humour was unconscious. It seems that during the first days of his life as a journalist in New York, Walt essayed to compromise with Mannahatta by wearing a frock coat, a high hat, and a flower in his lapel. We regret greatly that no photo of Walt in this rig has been preserved, for we would like to have seen the gentle misery of his bearing.

McSORLEY'S

Sir Dick—would one speak of him as the first colyumist?—continued by making what is, we suppose, one of the earliest references in literature to the newspaper man's "expense account." But the expenses of the reporter two centuries ago seem rather modest. Steele said:

* Evidently the bus boy.

But what we started to say was that if, like Dick Steele, we were in the habit of dating our stuff from various inns around the town, our choice for a quiet place in which to compose items of "gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment" would be McSorley's—"The Old House at Home"—up on Seventh Street. We had feared that this famous old cabin of cheer might have gone west in the recent evaporation; but rambling round in the neighbourhood of the Cooper Union we saw its familiar doorway with a shock of glad surprise. After all, there is no reason why the old-established houses should not go on doing a good business on a Volstead basis. It has never been so much a question of what a man drinks as the atmosphere in which he drinks it. Atrocious cleanliness and glitter and raw naked marble make the soda fountains a disheartening place to the average male. He likes a dark, low-ceilinged, and not too obtrusively sanitary place to take his ease. At McSorley's is everything that the innocent fugitive from the world requires. The great amiable cats that purr in the back room. The old pictures and playbills on the walls. The ancient clocks that hoarsely twang the hours. We cannot imagine a happier place to sit down with a pad of paper and a well-sharpened pencil than at that table in the corner by the window. Or the table just under that really lovely little portrait of Robert Burns—would there be any more propitious place in New York at which to fashion verses? There would be no interruptions, such as make versifying almost impossible in a newspaper office. The friendly bartenders in their lilac-coloured shirts are wise and gracious men. They would not break in upon one's broodings. Every now and then, while the hot sun smote the awnings outside, there would be another china mug of that one-half-of-1-per-cent. ale, which seems to us very good. We repeat: we don't care so much what we drink as the surroundings among which we drink it. We are not, if you will permit the phrase, sot in our ways. We like the spirit of McSorley's, which is decent, dignified, and refined. No club has an etiquette more properly self-respecting.

One does not go to McSorley's without a glimpse at that curious old red pile Bible House. It happened this way: Our friend Endymion was back from his vacation and we were trying to celebrate it in modest fashion. We were telling him all the things that had happened since he went away—that Bob Holliday had had a fortieth birthday, and Frank Shay had published his bibliography of Walt Whitman, and all that sort of thing; and in our mutual excitement Endymion whisked too swiftly round a corner and caught his jacket on a sharp door-latch and tore it. Inquiring at Astor Place's biggest department store as to where we could get it mended, they told us to go to "Mr. Wright the weaver" on the sixth floor of Bible House, and we did so. On our way back, avoiding the ancient wire rope elevator (we know only one other lift so delightfully mid-Victorian, viz., one in Boston, that takes you upstairs to see Edwin Edgett, the gentle-hearted literary editor of the Boston Transcript), we walked down the stairs, peeping into doorways in great curiosity. The whole building breathed a dusky and serene quaintness that pricks the imagination. It is a bit like the shop in Edinburgh (on the corner of the Leith Walk and Antigua Street, if we remember) that R.L.S. described in "A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured"—"it was dark and smelt of Bibles." We looked in at the entrance to the offices of the Christian Herald. The Bowling Green thought that what he saw was two young ladies in close and animated converse; but Endymion insisted that it was one young lady doing her hair in front of a large mirror. "Quite a pretty little picture," said Endymion. We argued about this as we went down the stairs. Finally we went back to make sure. Endymion was right. Even in the darkness of Bible House, we agreed, romance holds sway. And then we found a book shop on the ground floor of Bible House. One of our discoveries there was "Little Mr. Bouncer," by Cuthbert Bede—a companion volume to "Mr. Verdant Green."

But Dick Steele's idea of writing his column from different taverns round the city is rather gaining ground in our affections. There would be no more exciting way of spending a fortnight or so than in taking a walking tour through the forests of New York, camping for the night wherever we happened to find ourself at dark, Adam-and-Evesdropping as we went, and giving the nearest small boy fifty cents to take our copy down to the managing editor. Some of our enterprising clients, who are not habitual commuters and who live in a state of single cussedness, might try it some time.

The only thing we missed at McSorley's, we might add, was the old-time plate of onions. But then we were not there at lunch time, and the pungent fruit may have been hidden away in the famous tall ice box. Hutchins Hapgood once said, in an article about McSorley's in Harper's Weekly: "The wives of the men who frequent McSorley's always know where their husbands have been. There is no mistaking a McSorley onion." He was right. The McSorley onion—"rose among roots"—was sui generis. It had a reach and authenticity all its own.

We have said a good deal, now and then, about some of the taverns and chophouses we enjoy; but the one that tingles most strongly in our bosom is one that doesn't exist. That is the chophouse that might be put in the cellar of that glorious old round-towered building at 59 Ann Street.

As you go along Ann Street, you will come, between numbers 57 and 61, to an old passage-way running down to a curious courtyard, which is tenanted mostly by carpenters and iron-workers, and by a crowded store which seems to be a second-hand ship-chandlery, for old sea-boots, life preservers, fenders, ship's lanterns, and flags hang on the wall over the high stairway. In the cellars are smithies where you will see the bright glare of a forge and men with faces gleaming in tawny light pulling shining irons out of the fire. The whole place is too fascinating to be easily described. That round-tower house is just our idea of the right place for a quiet tavern or club, where one would go in at lunch time, walk over a sawdusted floor to a table bleached by many litres of slopovers, light a yard of clay, and call for a platter of beefsteak pie. The downtown region is greatly in need of the kind of place we have in mind, and if any one cares to start a chophouse in that heavenly courtyard, the Three Hours for Lunch Club pledges itself to attend regularly.

A PORTRAIT

I suppose that B——,—I wish I could name him, but it would be an indecency to do so, for part of his charm is his complete unconsciousness of the affection, and even adoration, of the little group of younger men who call themselves his "fans"—I suppose that B——'s talk is as nearly Johnsonian in virtue and pungency as any spoken wisdom now hearable in this country. To know him is, in the absolute truth of that enduring phrase, a liberal education. To his simplicity, his valorous militancy for truth, he joins the mind of a great scholar, the placable spirit of an eager child.

I said "Johnsonian"—yet even in the great Doctor as we have him recorded there were a certain truculence and vehemence that are a little foreign to B——'s habit. Fearless champion as he is, there is always a gentleness about him. Even when his voice deepens and he is well launched on a long argument, he is never brutally dogmatic, never cruelly discourteous.

The beauty of B——'s talk, the quality that would make it a delight to listen to him all a summer afternoon, is that he gives, unconsciously, a perfect exhibition of a perfect process, a great mind in motion. His mind is too full, too crowded, too ratiocinative, for easy and frugal utterance. Sometimes, unless one is an acute listener, he is almost incoherent in his zeal to express all the phases and facets of the thought that flashes upon him. And yet, if one could (unknown to him) have a stenographer behind the arras to take it all down, so that his argument could be analyzed at leisure, it would show its anatomical knitting and structure. Do you remember how Burke's speech on Conciliation was parsed and sub-headed in the preface to the school-texts? Just so, in I and II and III, A. B. and C, (α), (β), and (γ), i, ii, and iii, we could articulate the strict and bony logic that vertebrates B——'s talk. Reservations, exceptions, qualifications, parentheses, sub-clauses, and humorous paraphrases swim upon him as he goes, and he deals with each as it comes. Sometimes, one thinks, he has lost the spine of the discourse, is mazed in a ganglion of nerves and sinews. But no! give him time and back he comes to the marrow of his theme!

What a happiness this is to listen to—he (bless his heart) now and then apologizing for his copiousness, little dreaming that we are all better men for hearing him; that his great gray head and clear kindly eye ("His mild and magnificent eye": whose is that phrase?) are to us a symbol of Socratic virtue and power; that there is not one of us who, after an hour or so with him, does not depart with private resolutions of honour and fidelity to wisdom. How he irrigates his subject, whatever it is.

I'll tell you who Time gallops withal! It is when B—— sits down at a corner table of some chophouse, and (the rest of us seeing to it that the meal gets ordered, and now and then saying something about the food so that he will remember to eat) we marvel to watch the glow and business of a mind so great paired with a heart so simple.

"My idea is this," he says, "subject to an exception which I will state in a moment." Taking up his exception, he makes it so lucid, so pregnant, so comprehensive, so irresistible, that it seems to us the whole and satisfying dogma; and then, suddenly turning it inside-outward, he reveals the seams, and we remember that it was only a trifling nexus in the rational series. He returns to his main thesis, and other counterpoising arguments occur to him. He outlines them, with delicious Æsopian sagacity. "Of course this analysis is only quantitative, not qualitative," he says. "But I will now restate my position with all the necessary reservations, and we'll see if it will hold water."

We smile, and look at each other slyly, in the sheer happiness of enjoying a perfect work of art. He must be a mere quintain, a poor lifeless block, who does not revel in such an exhibition, where those two rare qualities of mind—honesty and agility—are locked in one.

Of course—it is hardly necessary to say—we do not always agree with everything he says. But we could not disagree with him; for we see that his broad, shrewd, troubled spirit could take no other view, arising out of the very multitude and swarm and pressure of his thought. Those who plod diligently and narrowly along a country lane may sometimes reach the destination less fatigued than the more conscientious and passionate traveller who quarters the fields and beats the bounds, intent to leave no covert unscrutinized. But in him we see and love and revere something rare and precious, not often found in our present way of life; in matters concerning the happiness of others, a devoted spirit of unrivalled wisdom; in those pertaining to himself, a child's unblemished innocence. The perplexities of others are his daily study; his own pleasures, a constant surprise.

GOING TO PHILADELPHIA

Any lover of America is poor indeed unless he has savoured and meditated the delicious contrast of these two cities, separated by so few miles and yet by a whole world of philosophy and metaphysics. But he is a mere tyro of the two who has only made the voyage by the P.R.R. The correct way to go is by the Reading, which makes none of those annoying intermediate stops at Newark, Trenton, and so on, none of that long detour through West Philadelphia, starts you off with a ferry ride and a background of imperial campaniles and lilac-hazed cliffs and summits in the superb morning light. And the Reading route, also, takes you through a green Shakespearean land of beauty, oddly different from the flat scrubby plains traversed by the Pennsy. Consider, if you will, the hills of the idyllic Huntington Valley as you near Philadelphia; or the little white town of Hopewell, N.J., with its pointing church spire. We have often been struck by the fact that the foreign traveller between New York and Washington on the P.R.R. must think America the most flat, dreary, and uninteresting countryside in the world. Whereas if he would go from Jersey City by the joint Reading–Central New Jersey–B.&O. route, how different he would find it. No, we are not a Reading stockholder.

We went over to Philly, after having been unfaithful to her for too many months. Now we have had from time to time, most menacing letters from indignant clients, protesting that we have been unfaithful to all the tenets and duties of a Manhattan journalist because we have with indecent candour confessed an affection for both Brooklyn and Philadelphia. We lay our cards on the table. We can't help it. Philadelphia was the first large city we ever knew, and how she speaks to us! And there's a queer thing about Philadelphia, hardly believable to the New Yorker who has never conned her with an understanding eye. You emerge from the Reading Terminal (or, if you will, from Broad Street Station) with just a little superbness of mood, just a tinge of worldly disdain, as feeling yourself fresh from the grandeur of Manhattan and showing perhaps (you fondly dream) some pride of metropolitan bearing. Very well. Within half an hour you will be apologizing for New York. In their quiet, serene, contented way those happy Philadelphians will be making you a little shame-faced of the bustling madness of our heaven-touching Babel. Of course, your secret adoration of Manhattan, the greatest wild poem ever begotten by the heart of man, is not readily transmissible. You will stammer something of what it means to climb upward from the subway on a spring morning and see that golden figure over Fulton Street spreading its shining wings above the new day. And they will smile gently, that knowing, amiable Philadelphia smile.

We were false to our credo in that we went via the P.R.R., but we were compensated by a man who was just behind us at the ticket window. He asked for a ticket to Asbury Park. "Single, or return?" asked the clerk. "I don't believe I'll ever come back," he said, but with so unconsciously droll an accent that the ticket seller screamed with mirth.

There was something very thrilling in strolling again along Chestnut Street, watching all those delightful people who are so unconscious of their characteristic qualities. New York has outgrown that stage entirely: New Yorkers are conscious of being New Yorkers, but Philadelphians are Philadelphians without knowing it; and hence their unique delightfulness to the observer. Nothing seemed to us at all changed—except that the trolleys have raised their fare from five cents to seven. The Liberty Toggery Shop down on Chestnut Street was still "Going Out of Business," just as it was a couple of years ago. Philip Warner, the famous book salesman at Leary's Old Book Store, was out having lunch, as usual. The first book our eye fell upon was "The Experiences of an Irish R.M.," which we had hunted in vain in these parts. The only other book that caught our eye particularly was a copy of "Patrins," by Louise Guiney, which we saw a lady carrying on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania.

But perhaps New York exerts its own fascination upon Philadelphians, too. For when we returned we selfishly persuaded a friend of ours to ride with us on the train so that we might imbibe some of his ripe orotund philosophy, which we had long been deprived of. He is a merciless Celt, and all the way over he preached us a cogent sermon on our shortcomings and backslidings. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, and it was nice to know that there was still someone who cared enough for us to give us a sound cursing. Between times, while we were catching breath, he expatiated upon the fact that New York is death and damnation to the soul; but when we got to Manhattan Transfer he suddenly abandoned his intended plan of there catching the next train back to the land of Penn. A curious light began to gleam in his mild eyes; he settled his hat firmly upon his head and strode out into the Penn Station. "I think I'll go out and look round a bit," he said. We wonder whether he has gone back yet?

II

The other day we had a chance to go to Philadelphia in the right way—by the Reading, the P. and R., the Peaceful and Rapid. As one of our missions in life is to persuade New York and Philadelphia to love one another, we will tell you about it.

Ah, the jolly old Reading! Take the 10 o'clock ferry from Liberty Street, and as the Plainfield kicks herself away from the slip with a churning of cream and silver, study Manhattan's profile in the downpour of morning sun. That winged figure on the Tel and Tel Building (the loveliest thing in New York, we insist) is like a huge and queerly erect golden butterfly perched momently in the blue. The 10:12 train from Jersey City we call the Max Beerbohm Special because there are Seven Men in the smoker. No, the Reading is never crowded. (Two more men did get on at Elizabeth.) You can make yourself comfortable, put your coat, hat, and pipecleaners on one seat, your books, papers, and matches on another. Here is the stout conductor whom we used to know so well by sight, with his gold insignia. He has forgotten that we once travelled with him regularly, and very likely he wonders why we beam so cheerfully. We flash down the Bayonne peninsula, with a glimpse of the harbour, Staten Island in the distance, a schooner lying at anchor. Then we cross Newark Bay, pure opaline in a clear, pale blue light. H.G. Dwight is the only other chap who really enjoys Newark Bay the way it deserves to be. He wrote a fine poem about it once.

But we had one great disappointment. For an hour or so we read a rubbishy novel, thinking to ourself that when the Max Beerbohm Express reached that lovely Huntington Valley neighbourhood, we would lay down the book and study the scenery, which we know by heart. When we came to the Neshaminy, that blithe little green river, we were all ready to be thrilled. And then the train swung away to the left along the cut-off to Wayne Junction and we missed our bright Arcadia. We had wanted to see again the little cottage at Meadowbrook (so like the hunting lodge in the forest in "The Prisoner of Zenda") which a suasive real-estate man once tried to rent to us. (Philadelphia realtors are no less ingenious than the New York species.) We wanted to see again the old barn, rebuilt by an artist, at Bethayres, which he also tried to rent to us. We wanted to see again the queer "desirable residence" (near the gas tanks at Marathon) which he did rent us. But we had to content ourself with the scenery along the cut-off, which is pleasant enough in its way—there is a brown-green brook along a valley where a buggy was crawling down a lane among willow trees in a wealth of sunlight. And the dandelions are all out in those parts. Yes, it was a lovely morning. We found ourself pierced by the kind of mysterious placid melancholy that we only enjoy to the full in a Reading smoker, when, for some unknown reason, hymn tunes come humming into our head and we are alarmed to notice ourself falling in love with humanity as a whole.

We could write a whole newspaper page about travelling to Philly on the Reading. Consider those little back gardens near Wayne Junction, how delightfully clean, neat, domestic, demure. Compare entering New York toward the Grand Central, down that narrow frowning alleyway of apartment house backs, with imprisoned children leaning from barred windows. But as you spin toward Wayne Junction you see acres and acres of trim little houses, each with a bright patch of turf. Here is a woman in a blue dress and white cap, busily belabouring a rug on the grass. The bank of the cutting by Wayne Junction is thick with a tangle of rosebushes which will presently be in blossom; we know them well. Spring Garden Street: if you know where to look you can catch a blink of Edgar Allan Poe's little house. Through a jumble of queer old brick chimneys and dormers, and here we are at the Reading Terminal, with its familiar bitter smell of coal gas.

Of course we stop to have a look at the engine, one of those splendid Reading locos with the three great driving wheels. Splendid things, the big Reading locos; when they halt they pant so cheerfully and noisily, like huge dogs, much louder than any other engines. We always expect to see an enormous red tongue running in and out over the cowcatcher. Vast thick pants, as the poet said in "Khubla Khan." We can't remember if he wore them, or breathed them, but there it is in the poem; look it up. Reading engineers, too, always give us a sense of security. They have gray hair, cropped very close. They have a benign look, rather like Walt Whitman if he were shaved. We wrote a poem about one of them once, Tom Hartzell, who used to take the 5:12 express out of Jersey City.

Philadelphia, incidentally, is the only large city where the Dime Museum business still flourishes. For the first thing we see on leaving the Terminal is that the old Bingham Hotel is now The World's Museum, given over to Ursa the Bear Girl and similar excitements. But where is the beautiful girl with slick dark hair who used to be at the Reading terminal news-stand?

How much more we could tell you about travelling on the Reading! We would like to tell you about the queer assortment of books we brought back with us. (There were twelve men in the smoker, coming home.) We could tell how we tried to buy, without being observed, a magazine which we will call Foamy Fiction, in order to see what the new editor (a friend of ours) is printing. Also, we always buy a volume of Gissing when we go to Philly, and this time we found "In the Year of Jubilee" in the shop of Jerry Cullen, the delightful bookseller who used to be so redheaded, but is getting over it now in the most logical way. We could tell you about the lovely old whitewashed stone farmhouses (with barns painted red on behalf of Schenk's Mandrake Pills) and about the famous curve near Roelofs, so called because the soup rolls off the table in the dining car when they take the curve at full speed; and about Bound Brook, which has a prodigious dump of tin cans that catches the setting sunlight——

It makes us sad to think that a hundred years hence people will be travelling along that road and never know how much we loved it. They will be doing so to-morrow, too; but it seems more mournful to think about the people a hundred years hence.

When we got back to Jersey City, and stood on the front end of the ferryboat, Manhattan was piling up all her jewels into the cold green dusk. There were a few stars, just about as many as there are passengers in a Reading smoker. There was one big star directly over Brooklyn, and another that seemed to be just above Plainfield. We pondered, as the ferry slid toward its hutch at Liberty Street, that there were no stars above Manhattan. Just at that moment—five minutes after seven—the pinnacle of the Woolworth blossomed a ruby red. New York makes her own.

III

You never know when an adventure is going to begin. But on a train is a good place to lie in wait for them. So we sat down in the smoker of the 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time P.R.R. express to Philadelphia, in a receptive mood.

At Manhattan Transfer the brakeman went through the train, crying in a loud, clear, emphatic barytone: "Next stop for this train is North Philadelphia!"

We sat comfortably, and in that mood of secretly exhilarated mental activity which is induced by riding on a fast train. We were looking over the June Atlantic. We smiled gently to ourself at that unconscious breath of New England hauteur expressed in the publisher's announcement, "The edition of the Atlantic is carefully restricted." Then, meditating also on the admirable sense and skill with which the magazine is edited, and getting deep into William Archer's magnificent article "The Great Stupidity" (which we hope all our clients will read) we became aware of outcries of anguish and suffering in the aisle near by.

At Manhattan Transfer a stout little man with a fine domy forehead and a derby hat tilted rather far aft had entered the smoker. He suddenly learned that the train did not stop at Newark. He uttered lamentation, and attacked the brakeman with grievous protest. "I heard you say, This train stops at Newark and Philadelphia," he insisted. His cigar revolved wildly in the corner of his mouth; crystal beads burst out upon the opulent curve of his forehead. "I've got to meet a man in Newark and sell him a bill of goods."

The brakeman was gentle but firm. "Here's the conductor," he said. "You'll have to talk to him."

Now this is a tribute of admiration and respect to that conductor. He came along the aisle punching tickets, holding his record slip gracefully folded round the middle finger of his punch hand, as conductors do. Like all experienced conductors he was alert, watchful, ready for any kind of human guile and stupidity, but courteous the while. The man bound for Newark ran to him and began his harangue. The frustrated merchant was angry and felt himself a man with a grievance. His voice rose in shrill tones, he waved his hands.

Then began a scene that was delightful to watch. The conductor was magnificently tactful. He ought to have been an ambassador (in fact, he reminded us of one ambassador, for his trim and slender figure, his tawny, drooping moustache, the gentle and serene tact of his bearing, were very like Mr. Henry van Dyke). He allowed the protestant to exhaust himself with reproaches, and then he began an affectionate little sermon, tender, sympathetic, but firm.

"I thought this train stopped at Newark," the fat man kept on saying.

"You mustn't think, you must know," said the conductor, gazing shrewdly at him above the rims of his demi-lune spectacles. "Now, why did you get on a train without making sure where it stopped? You heard the brakeman say: 'Newark and Philadelphia'? No; he said 'North Philadelphia.' Yes, I know you were in a hurry, but that wasn't our fault, was it? Now, let me tell you something: I've been working for this company for twenty-five years...."

Unhappily the noise of the train prevented us from hearing the remark that followed. We were remembering a Chinese translation that we made once. It went something like this:

But as we watched the two, the conductor gently convincing the irate passenger that he would have to abide by his mistake, and the truculent fat man gradually realizing that he was hopelessly in the wrong, a new aspect subtly came over the dialogue. We saw the stout man wither and droop. We thought he was going to die. His hat slid farther and farther upward on his dewy brow. His hands fluttered. His cigar, grievously chewed, trembled in its corner of his mouth. His fine dark eyes filled with tears.

The conductor, you see, was explaining that he would have to pay the fare to North Philadelphia and then take the first train back from there to Newark.

We feared, for a few minutes, that it really would be a case for a chirurgeon, with cupping and leeching and smelling salts. Our rotund friend was in a bad way. His heart, plainly, was broken. From his right-hand trouser emerged a green roll. With delicate speed and tact the conductor hastened this tragic part of the performance. His silver punch flashed in his hand as he made change, issued a cash slip, and noted the name and address of the victim, for some possible future restitution, we surmised, or perhaps only as a generous anæsthetic.

The stout man sat down a few seats in front of us and we studied his back. We have never seen a more convincing display of chagrin. With a sombre introspective stare he gazed glassily before him. We never saw any one show less enthusiasm for the scenery. The train flashed busily along through the level green meadows, which blended exactly with the green plush of the seats, but our friend was lost in a gruesome trance. Even his cigar (long since gone out) was still, save for an occasional quiver.

The conductor came to our seat, looking, good man, faintly stern and sad, like a good parent who has had, regretfully, to chastise an erring urchin.

"Well," we said, "the next time that chap gets on a train he'll take care to find out where it stops."

The conductor smiled, but a humane, understanding smile. "I try to be fair with 'em," he said.

"I think you were a wonder," we said.

By the time we reached North Philadelphia the soothing hand of Time had exerted some of its consolation. The stout man wore a faintly sheepish smile as he rose to escape. The brakeman was in the vestibule. He, younger than the conductor, was no less kind, but we would hazard that he is not quite as resigned to mortal error and distress. He spoke genially, but there was a note of honest rebuke in his farewell.

"The next time you get on a train," he said, "watch your stop."

OUR TRICOLOUR TIE

It is really astonishing, by the way, how many gardeners there are in a newspaper office. We once worked in a place where a horticultural magazine and a beautiful journal of rustic life were published, and the delightful people who edited those magazines were really men about town; but here in the teeming city and in the very node of urban affairs, to wit, the composing room, one hears nought but merry gossip about gardens, and the great and good men by whom we are surrounded begin their day by gazing tenderly upon jars full of white iris. And has not our friend Charley Sawyer of the dramatic department given us a lot of vegetable marrow seeds from his own garden and greatly embarrassed us by so doing, for he has put them in two packets marked "Male" and "Female," and to tell the truth we had no idea that the matter of sex extended even as far as the apparently placid and unperturbed vegetable marrow. Mr. Sawyer explained carefully to us just how the seeds ought to be planted, the males and females in properly wedded couples, we think he said; but we are not quite sure, and we are too modest to ask him to explain again; but if we should make a mistake in planting those seeds, if we were to—— Come, we are getting away from our topic. Peter had told us about his corn, in his garden, that is, out in Nutley (and that reminds us of the difficulties of reading poetry aloud. Mr. Chesterton tells somewhere a story about a poem of Browning's that he heard read aloud when he was a child, and understood the poem to say "John scorns ale."

Now Mr. Chesterton—you understand, of course, we are referring to Gilbert Keith Chesterton—being from his very earliest youth an avowed partisan of malt liquor, this heresy made an impression upon his tender cortex, and he never forgot about John, in Browning's poem, scorning ale. But many years afterward, reading Browning, he found that the words really were: "John's corns ail," meaning apparently that John was troubled by pedal callouses.) Peter, we repeat, and to avoid any further misunderstanding and press diligently toward our theme, having mentioned his garden, who should come up to us but Pete Corcoran, also of the composing room force, and a waggish friend of ours, and gazing on us in a manner calculated to make us feel ill at ease he said, "I suppose you are going to write something about that tie of yours."

Now we were wearing a scarf that we are very fond of, the kind of tie, we believe, that is spoken of as "regimental stripes"; at any rate, it is designated with broad diagonal bands of colour: claret, gold, and blue. It was obvious to us that Pete Corcoran, or, to give him his proper name, Mr. Corcoran, had said what he did merely in a humorous way, or possibly satiric, implying that we are generally so hard up for something to write about that we would even undertake so trifling a subject as haberdashery; but as we went downstairs again to our kennel, au dixième, as Mr. Wanamaker would call it, we thought seriously about this and decided that we would cause Pete's light-hearted suggestion to recoil violently upon his friendly brow, and that we would write a little essay about this tie and tell its story, which, to be honest, is very interesting to us. And this essay we are now endeavouring to write, even if it has to run in several instalments.

It was curious, incidentally (but not really more curious than most human affairs), that Pete (or Mr. Corcoran) whether he was merely chaffing us, or whether he was really curious about a scarf of such wanton colour scheme, should have mentioned it just when he did, for as a matter of fact that tie had been on our mind all morning. You see to-day being warm (and please remember that what we call to-day, is now, when you are reading this, yesterday) we did not wear our waistcoat, or, if you prefer, our vest; but by the time we had decided not to wear our waistcoat we had already tied our scarf in the usual way we tie that particular scarf when we wear it, viz., so as to conceal a certain spot on it which got there we know not how. We do not know what kind of a spot it is; perhaps it is a soup stain, perhaps it is due to a shrimp salad we had with Endymion at that amusing place that calls itself the Crystal Palace; we will not attempt to trace the origin of that swarthy blemish on the soft silk of our tie; but we have cunningly taught ourself to knot the thing so that the spot does not show. (Good, we have made that plain: we are getting along famously.)

Since the above was written we have been uptown and had lunch with Alf Harcourt and Will Howe and other merry gentlemen; and Will Howe, who used to be a professor of English and is now a publisher, says we ought to break up our essays into shorter paragraphs. We are fain and teachable, as someone once said in a very pretty poem; we will start a new paragraph right away.

But when our tie is tied in the manner described above, it leaves one end very much longer than the other. This is not noticeable when we wear our waistcoat; but having left off our waistcoat, we were fearful that the manner in which our tie was disposed would attract attention; and everyone would suspect just why it was tied in that way.

And we did not have time to take it off and put on another one, because we had to catch the 8:06.

So when Pete Corcoran spoke about our tie, was that what was in his mind, we wondered? Did he infer the existence of that spot, even though he did not see it? And did he therefore look down upon, or otherwise feel inclined to belittle our tie? If that were the case, we felt that we really owed it to ourself to tell the story of the tie, how we bought it, and why; and just why that tie is to us not merely a strip of rather gaudy neckwear, but a symbol of an enchanting experience, a memory and token of an epoch in our life, the sign and expression of a certain feeling that can never come again—and, indeed (as the sequel will show), that should not have come when it did.

It was a bright morning, last November, in Gloversville, New York, when we bought that tie. Now an explanation of just why we bought that tie, and what we were doing in Gloversville, cannot possibly be put into a paragraph, at any rate the kind of paragraph that Will Howe (who used to be a professor of English) would approve. On the whole, rather than rewrite the entire narrative, tersely, we will have to postpone the dénouement (of the story, not the tie) until to-morrow. This is an exhibition of the difficulty of telling anything exactly. There are so many subsidiary considerations that beg for explanation. Please be patient, Pete, and to-morrow we will explain that tie in detail.

II

It was a bright and transparent cold morning in Gloversville, N.Y., November, 1919, and passing out of the Kingsborough Hotel we set off to have a look at the town. And if we must be honest, we were in passable good humour. To tell the truth, as Gloversville began its daily tasks in that clear lusty air and in a white dazzling sunshine, we believed, simpleton that we were, that we were on the road toward making our fortune. Now, we will have to be brief in explanation of the reason why we felt so, for it is a matter not easy to discuss with the requisite delicacy. Shortly, we were on the road—"trouping," they call it in the odd and glorious world of the theatre—with a little play in which we were partially incriminated, on a try-out voyage of one-night stands. The night before, the company had played Johnstown (a few miles from Gloversville), and if we do have to say it, the good-natured citizens of that admirable town had given them an enthusiastic reception. So friendly indeed had been our houses on the road and so genially did the company manager smile upon us that any secret doubts and qualms we had entertained were now set at rest. Lo! had not the company manager himself condescended to share a two-room suite with us in the Kingsborough Hotel that night? And we, a novice in this large and exhilarating tract of life, thought to ourself that this was the ultimate honour that could be conferred upon a lowly co-author. Yes, we said to ourself, as we beamed upon the excellent town of Gloversville, admiring the Carnegie Library and the shops and the numerous motor cars and the bright shop windows and munching some very fine doughnuts we had seen in a bakery. Yes, we repeated, this is the beginning of fame and fortune. Ah! Pete Corcoran may scoff, but that was a bright and golden morning, and we would not have missed it. We did not know then the prompt and painful end destined for that innocent piece when it reached the Alba Via Maxima. All we knew was that Saratoga and Newburgh and Johnstown had taken us to their bosoms.

At this moment, and our thoughts running thus, we happened to pass by the window of a very alluring haberdasher's shop. In that window we saw displayed a number of very brilliant neckties, all rich and glowing with bright diagonal stripes. The early sunlight fell upon them and they were brave to behold. And we said to ourself that it would be a proper thing for one who was connected with the triumphal onward march of a play that was knocking them cold on the one-night circuit to flourish a little and show some sign of worldly vanity. (We were still young, that November, and our mind was still subject to some harmless frailties.) We entered the shop and bought that tie, the very same one that struck Pete Corcoran with a palsy when he saw it the other day. We put it in our pocket and walked back to the hotel.

Now comes a portion of the narrative that exhibits to the full the deceits and stratagems of the human being. This tie, which we liked so much, thinking it the kind of thing that would add a certain dash and zip to our bearing, was eminently a metropolitan-looking kind of scarf. No one would think to look at it that it had been bought in Gloversville. And we said to ourself that if we went quietly back to the hotel and slipped unobtrusively into the washroom and put on that tie, no one would know that we had just bought it in Gloversville, but would think it was a part of our elaborate wardrobe that we had brought from New York. Very well. (We would not reveal these shameful subterfuges to any one but Pete Corcoran.) No sooner said than done; and behold us taking the trolley from Gloversville to Fonda, with the rest of the company, wearing that tie that flared and burned in the keen wintry light like a great banner, like an oriflamme of youthful defiance.

And what a day that was! We shall never forget it; we will never forget it! Was that the Mohawk Valley that glittered in the morning? (A sunshine so bright that sitting on the sunward side of the smoker and lighting our pipe, the small flame of our match paled shamefully into a tiny and scarce visible ghost.) Our tie strengthened and sustained us in our zest for a world so coloured and contoured. We even thought that it was a bit of a pity that our waistcoat was cut with so shallow and conservative a V that the casual passerby would see but little of that triumphant silk beacon. The fellow members of our company were too polite to remark upon it, but we saw that they had noticed it and took it as a joyful omen.

We had two and a half hours in Albany that day and we remember that we had set our heart on buying a certain book. Half an hour we allotted to lunch and the other two hours was spent in visiting the bookshops of Albany, which are many and good. We wonder if any Albany booksellers chance to recall a sudden flash of colour that came, moved along the shelves, and was gone? We remember half a dozen book stores that we visited; we remember them just as well as if it were yesterday, and we remember the great gusto and bright cheer of the crowds of shoppers, already doing their Christmas pioneering. We remember also that three of the books we bought (to give away) were McFee's "Aliens" and Frank Adams's "Tobogganing on Parnassus," yes, and Stevenson's "Lay Morals." Oh, a great day! And we remember the ride from Albany to Kingston, with the darkening profile of the Catskills on the western side of the train, the tawny colours of the fields (like a lion's hide), the blue shadows of the glens, the sparkling Hudson in quick blinks of brightness, the lilac line of the hills when we reached Kingston in the dusk. We remember the old and dilapidated theatre at Kingston, the big shabby dressing rooms of the men, with the scribbled autographs of former mummers on the walls. And that night we said good-bye to our little play, whose very imperfections we had grown to love by this time, and took the 3:45 a.m. milk train to New York. We slept on two seats in the smoker, and got to Weehawken in the brumous chill of a winter dawn—still wearing our tie. Now can Pete Corcoran wonder why we are fond of it, and why, ever and anon, we get it out and wear it in remembrance?