Four or five men who look as though they have been celebrating a friend's last night of bachelorhood enter with exaggerated politeness, apologizing for occasional conflicts with chairs and tables. They order black coffee. Another man comes up to their table. They all leap up and shake hands. "The last time I saw you was in Bagdad!" he says. "What's happened to old 'Whisky Willie' of the Gunners? You remember that night...." This sort of talk still goes on in London where young men are linked together by common memories of the War. * * * As we go from the brilliantly lit room the emptiness and the chill of sleeping London meets us at the door. Long lines of lights shining on desolate pavements, a shuffling figure under a lamp, a slow taxicab cruising near the kerb, and then, surprisingly, like a ghost of old London, a hansom cab standing in Piccadilly, the ancient horse, head down as if remembering past things! In the cold air is the vague promise of a new day, a faint rumble of market carts and vans as if London stirs in her impressive slumber. At the Wheel He was sitting in the acrid unpleasantness of a London fog holding a steering-wheel and--the lives of men and women. It was Sunday. Inside the well-lit and almost pleasant omnibus a young man, wearing his Sunday hat, and a young girl, completely Sundayfied, sat holding hands as they pretended to read a newspaper. They saw no more than each other's eyes, and what more could they possibly have seen? Portentous women with unnaturally clean children entered or made a fussy exit from time to time, bent, no doubt, on that awfulness of a London Sunday--a visit to relatives. On some faces you could read a kind of comfortable condescension that somehow suggested a glittering descent on poor relations; on others a dutiful resignation--the composure of an ordained martyr preparing to meet the lions--and you pictured a stiff and patronizing tea in a distant but exalted suburb, with criticism underlying an afternoon of smooth insincerity! All the time the Man at the Wheel exhibited a broad and stocky back to the human comedy he was carrying; sometimes his face, tense and questioning, was turned towards the lit interior as he tried to gauge the right moment to accelerate after the descent of an agile passenger. Mostly, however, he just sat there peering into the white cotton-wool world of fog that was hung with saffron lights, his big hands in gloves, expertly and suddenly taking his vehicle from an unexpected near rush of light as a tramcar clanged past. And the passengers did not notice him. They had paid twopence to be taken in safety through the fog! * * * I sat there frankly admiring him.