It must be that the provincial friends who visit me are not as other men. I hear of people receiving guests from the country and taking them out for nice walks to the National Gallery, South Kensington Museum, the Tower, and other places of cultured dissipation provided by the generous rate-payer to discourage and kill off the cheap-tripper; but I have no such luck. To my ardent, blushing commendation of national eleemosynary entertainments, the rude provincials who assail my hospitality reply with a rude provincial wink. Frequent failure has, I fear, stripped my plausibility of its pristine bloom. Time was when I could boldly recommend Covent Garden Market at four o'clock in the morning as a first-rate attraction to the provincial pilgrim of pleasure, but your stammering tongue and quailing eye are plaguy mockers of your useful villainy. Mrs. Dangle herself begins to look doubtfully when, on our periodical little pleasure trips, I repeat the customary: "Tower! eh? It will be _such_ a treat!" Ah me! Confidence was a beautiful thing. The world grows too cynical. Earl's Court is the thin end of the wedge by which the hydra-headed serpent of unbelief is bred to fly roughshod over the thin ice of irresolute dissimulation, to nip the mask of pretence in the bud, and with its cold, uncharitable eye to suck the very life-blood of that confidence which is the corner-stone and sheet-anchor of friendly trust 'twixt man and man. Be that as it may, my praise of County Council Parks and County Council Bands, of Tower history and Kensington culture, is as ineffectual as a Swedish match in a gale. My visitors, as with one accord, reply, "That is neither here nor there. We are going to Earl's Court." Thus, Captandem had come to town, and said "he wanted to see things." I tempted him with the usual programme. "I am told," I insinuated, "that the Ethnographical Section of the British Museum 'silently but surely teaches many beautiful lessons.'" "I daresay," he sneered. "The educational facilities furnished by South Kensington Museum"-- "Educational fiddlesticks," interrupted he. "The Tower," I went on, "is improving to the mind." "I have had some." "The National Gallery"-- "Be hanged!" he snorted. "Do you take me for an Archæological Conference? or a British Association picnic?" "Well," I began, in my most winning Board-meeting manner, "if you don't like my suggestions, you can go to"-- "Earl's Court," he opportunely snapped. * * * * * He then explained that he had been reading in _The Savoy_, a poem by Sarojini Chattopâdhyây on "Eastern Dancers," commencing thus:--