harbours, glances along ropes with quietened but still professional eyes.—He gets in this way the feeling of leisure "rubbed in" and, without anxieties, his mind is kept employed by the things he best understands. And it is because in London there are so many things to see, so many anecdotes to be retailed, such a constant passing of material and human objects, that London holds us.
I do not know that it really sharpens our wits: I fancy that it merely gives us more accidental matters on which to display them, more occurrences to which to attach morals that have been for years crystallised in our minds.—I was listening to the observations of two such 'bus drivers. They were like this: of a red-nosed fourwheel driver: "Now then old danger signal!" To a driver of a very magnificent state carriage: "Where are you going with that glass hearse?" Of a very small man conducting a very tall lady across the road: "I reckon he wants a step ladder when he kisses her goodnight!"
Whereupon the driver who hadn"t made the remark muttered: "Just what I was going to say, Bill. You took the very words out of my mouth."—Thus these famous witticisms of the London streets are largely traditional and common property. No doubt London breeds a certain cast of mind by applying men's thoughts to a similar class of occurrences, but the actual comments float in the air in class and class. In the classes that are as a rule recruited from the country, the type of mind is slower, more given to generalisation, less
129
