gave the old gentleman false information, and that in some detail, so that he could put down his little rows of figures and see them growing larger night after night. You see, it was not the wealth that he desired, it was the increase in the little rows of figures; the wealth he consumed was the same; he wore the same clothes, he ate the same food, he lived in the same house as before, and he had for a companion eternally one or another of the two nurses provided by the doctor. The figures increasing regularly as they did filled him with a greater and a greater joy. After two years of this business he came to die, but his passing was a very happy one: he blessed his sons fervently and told them that nothing had more comforted his old age than their sober business sense; they had nearly doubled the family fortune during their short administration of it; he congratulated them and was now ready to go to his God in peace. Which he did, and two weeks after the petition in bankruptcy was presented by the young people themselves, always the more decent way of doing it: but the old man had died content. Which parable leads up to the point at which I should have begun all this, which is, that once in my life, in the year 1901, during a heavy fog in the early morning of the month of November, in London, I met a perfectly contented man. He was the conductor of an omnibus. These vehicles depended in those days entirely on the traction of horses. They were therefore slow, and as the night, or rather the early morning, was foggy (it was a little after one) people going Westward--journalists for instance, who are compelled to be up at such hours--did not choose to travel in this way. There was no one in the ’bus but myself. I sat next the door as it rumbled along; there was one of those little faint oil lamps above it which are unique in Christendom for the small amount of light they give. It was impossible to read, but by the slight glimmer of it I saw suddenly revealed like a vision the face of that really happy man. It was a round face, framed in a somewhat slovenly hat and coat collar, but not slovenly in feature, though not severe. And as its owner clung to the rail and swung with the movements of the ’bus he whistled softly to himself a genial little air. It was not I but he that began the conversation. He told me that few things were a greater blessing in life than gas fires, especially if one could regulate the amount of gas by a penny in the slot. He pointed out to me that in this way there were never any disputes as to the amount of gas used, and he also said that it kept a man from the curse of credit, which was the ruin of so many. I told him that in my house there was no gas, but that his description almost made me wish there was. And so it did, for he went on to tell me how you could cook any mortal thing with any degree of heat and at any speed by the simple regulation of a tap.