At Kingsbury there was another of these classic events. It was never my proud privilege to witness the racing at Kingsbury; but the suppression of that meeting was a never-ceasing cause of regret to Warner, of the Welsh Harp, Hendon. I made the acquaintance of that illustrious man when I was sent down to interview Mrs. Girling on the part of a daily paper “whose name shall be nameless,” as a villain of melodrama once put it. The name of Mrs. Girling, I imagine, will call up no memories in the present generation. The poor lady, although she made a wonderful commotion in her time, has failed to write her name with any legibility on the page of history. Mrs. Girling, then, was the president, or high-priestess, or boss of the Shaker community, which at one time thought to establish itself in the country of a hundred religions and one sauce. Notwithstanding all that has been alleged to the contrary, the English still possess a certain sense of humour, and their knowledge of the new sect was chiefly derived from the writings of Artemus Ward, who had devoted a chapter of “His Book” to the more salient eccentricities of the Shakers. One of the sect he described as looking like “a last year’s bean-pole dressed in a long meal-bag.” The corybantic religionists who had come across the Atlantic with Mrs. Girling in the pious hope of converting the islanders had been evicted from their quarters in the New Forest, and had encamped on, and under, the grandstand on the Kingsbury racecourse. The expulsion of the Shakers from their Hampshire Eden became the subject of a great deal of comment in the Press, and Warner, who was above all else a showman, at once saw his way to make some money out of the eccentric exiles from the States. So he philanthropically offered the evicted evangelists such shelter as the Kingsbury grand-stand afforded. Mrs. Girling was grateful. Half London flocked to Hendon to inspect the high-priestess and her faithful following of Latter-Day Saints, and, incidentally, to partake of refreshments at the Welsh Harp. It was on my way home after my interview with Mrs. Girling that I made the acquaintance of Mr. Warner himself. He was a large, jovial, effusive person—quite the typical Boniface, in fact. I was about to write “the typical John Bull,” when I recollected that the national nickname has acquired associations which render it—well, not quite typical.