For myself I bear no ill-will to the League. I may object to the success with which it fills our stairs on the days of its meetings and tea-parties, but I cannot turn this into a pretext for quarrelling, while I can only admire the spirit of progress that has made it the first in the house to do its spring-cleaning by a vacuum cleaner and to set up a private letter-box. I can only congratulate it on the prosperity that has caused the overflow of its offices into the next house, and so led indirectly to the one personal encounter I have referred to. A few of the rooms were to let, and J.'s proposal to set up his printing-press in one of them involved us in a correspondence with the Secretary. Then I called, as by letter we were unable to agree upon details. The League, with a display of hospitality that should put the Architect to shame, bids everybody enter without knocking. But when I accepted this Christian invitation, I was confronted by a tall, solemn-faced young man, who informed me that the Secretary was "engaged in prayer," and I got no further than the inner hall. As I failed to catch the Secretary in his less professional moments, and as his devotions did not soften his heart to the extent of meeting us halfway, we quickly resumed the usual impersonality of our relations. I cannot imagine our house without the Church League and Mrs. Eliza Short, the Architect and Mr. Square. Were their names to vanish from the doors where I have seen them for the last sixteen years, it would give me the same sense of insecurity as if I suddenly looked out of my window to a Thames run dry, or to a domeless city in the distance. With this older group of tenants, who show their respect for a house of venerable age and traditions by staying in it, I think we are to be included and also the Solicitor of the Ground Floor Front. He has been with us a short time, it is true, but he succeeded our old Insurance Agent whom nothing save death could have removed, and for years before he lived no further away than Peter the Great's house across the street, where he would be still, had it not been torn down over his head to make way for the gaudy, new, grey stone building which foretells the beginning of the end of our ancient street. The Solicitor cloisters himself in his chambers more successfully even than the Architect or the Church League, and I have never yet laid eyes on him or detected a client at his door.