The London season languished. Even the cult of the great god Pleasure found few genuinely zealous votaries. Trade, said the managers of the big West-end drapery establishments, had never been so bad. Manifestly there was something radically wrong when crowds of women-folk no longer blocked the pavement in front of Simon Robertson’s great plate-glass windows. The king lay ill at Windsor Castle, and such social functions as might ordinarily have counted on the presence of royalty roused but little interest. Arid, parching days, and sultry, suffocating nights, made ball-rooms and places of entertainment almost unendurable. The booking-offices of the theatres told a convincing tale of bad business, and the art of advertisement in manifold forms, so well understood by stars of the stage and actor-managers (and so zealously promoted by the writers of dramatic gossip in the papers) took forms which suggested the desperation of despair. In the world of music it was just the same. People yawned or sighed wearily when their eyes met the puff preliminary concerning the latest freak in musical precocity. Even the emotional women who usually worshipped as near as might be the bushy-haired violinists exploited by concert agencies, fanned themselves languidly and stayed at home. In the city there was but little difference in the look of things. Men appeared to be busy, but their seeming energy was largely due to the mere habit of hurry, acquired through the influence of surroundings. Every morning, as usual, the swarm of stockbrokers, dealers, and hangers-on of the House, came bustling out of the stations at Liverpool Street, Broad Street, and Cannon Street. Between nine-thirty and ten-thirty the accustomed crowds might be seen hurrying over London Bridge. But when the brokers reached the Stock Exchange there was next to nothing to do. American rails refused to lend themselves to any sort of manipulated excitement, and in the mining market, shares were thrown about at rubbish prices, or could not be made to change hands at all. The financial journals still came out, but their advertisement pages lacked those big announcements of new issues from which their profits were mainly derived. They eked out a precarious existence by publishing carefully edited reports of company meetings at so much per column, supplying copies at special rates for transmission to confiding shareholders. The daily columns of market prices became shorter and shorter, for, in such times, the smaller companies could not pay to have their dead or dying stock quoted as if it still possessed the elements of vital movement. Of course, the galvanic efforts of the “great dailies” still continued; but the latest attempt of the _Times_ to introduce a new and important series of instructive works on almost give-away terms into the homes of the public (including a beautiful bookcase in fumed oak) met with practically no response at all.