These terrible fellows sized up everyone and everything, as they puffed and sipped. And there was nothing they did not know. They knew all the secrets of the Court as well as of Parliament. They knew why this man's name was not in the last list of honours and why that man's was. They knew everyone who drank too much and everyone who loved unwisely but too well. Politics, I confess, do not interest me, except as warp and woof of the newspaper drama of life. I would not like to be a politician; nor indeed could I. Only a surgical operation would be able to effect that: some phlebotomizing process, to be followed by an injection of molten brass into the deplenished veins. But I like to watch the wire-pullers at work. There was one at Dabney's, the secretary to some organization: a bulky Rabelaisian cigar-smoker, or I might almost say cigar-eater, named Rudson-Wayte. Looking at him through the haze, as he absorbed his tobacco and drank his whisky, I found myself wondering if on that idle Sunday--the first week-end--the Creator, when He surveyed His six days' work, had exact foreknowledge of these two lenitives and the extent to which His children in the distant days to come would depend upon them. Rudson-Wayte more even than most men at an editor's housewarming leant upon both, and they seemed to agree with him, for his head was undoubtedly clear and hard. In a bout with the gloves or a hundred yards' sprint no doubt he would cut a poor enough figure on such a regimen; but then the highly specialized civilization under which he flourishes has eliminated both necessities. Perfectly easy nowadays for a London gentleman to live fifty years after leaving College and never accelerate his steps at all. Not that Rudson-Wayte was a stranger to the strenuous life; but always from without. He had looked down amusedly from many a platform and watched ejections and free fights; but he had not taken part. His, to observe and make the best of the situation for his party. He told us of many such experiences and of the strategy which he had devised for the safety of his speakers. He referred to them as his men. "Of course, the only thing for me to think of was how to get my man out of it." And so forth.