For as I went down the main street of this Polity (they had “Main Street” stuck up in their language at the corner of the only possible mud alley of their town) I saw that blessed sight which sings to the heart and is one of the thirteen signs of civilisation, a barber’s pole. It was not very good; it was not planed or polished; the bark was still upon the chestnut wood of it; but there was a spiral of red round it in the orthodox fashion, at the end of it a tuft of red wool, and underneath it in very faded rough letters upon a board the words, “Here it is barbered.” More was to follow. I confess that I desired to draw, for beyond the little huts the mountains, once dreadful, now, being so far above me, compelled my attention. But just as I had sat down upon a great stone to draw their outline, there appeared through the disgusting little door under the barber’s pole one of those humans whom I have mentioned so often in these lines. He was about thirty, but he had never known care; his complexion was pink and white, his eyes were lively, his brown hair was short, curled, trimmed and oily, and some fifteen degrees from the middle of his head to the eastward went a very clear white line which was the parting of his hair. His two little moustaches curled upwards like rams’ horns; his chin was square and firm, but very full and healthy. He was looking out for customers. Oh, Humanity, my brothers, Divine Object of the Positivists, Plaything of the Theologians, Food of the God of War, Great of Destiny, Victim of Experience, Doubtful of Doom, Foreknowing of Death, Humanity enslaved, exultant, always on the march, never arriving, the only thing yet made that can laugh and can cry, Humanity, in fine, which was generously designed as matter for poets, hear! He was looking out for customers! Even to the railways of his own land it was nearly a hundred miles; no one read print; beyond Latin no foreign language perhaps was known. No vehicle on wheels had ever been into that place, even the maps were wrong, no one therein had seen a metalled road, a ship of any kind, nor perhaps one polished stone. But he was looking out for customers. He spotted me. He used no subterfuge; he smiled and beckoned with his finger, and I went at once, as men do when the Figure appears at the Doorway of the Feast and beckons some one of the revellers into the darkness. I obeyed. He put a towel round my neck; he lathered my chin; I gazed at the ceiling, and he began to shave.