"Of course, the residuary legatee is in exactly the same position as
that in Rex _v._ Tolbooth, and I therefore think you will agree...."
This from the left. From the right:
"The police know perfectly well who did it, but they daren't say
so--yet. Of course, you've heard..." And from the corner:
"You can't do it with your tongue in your cheek! You must be
sincere! You must believe in it, no matter how bad it is. Have you
read--"
Then, slowly, peevishly, comes the inevitable Dickensian, the old man
whose collars and neckties seem deathless, whose clothes have a queer
cut, whose hat, while it does not actually challenge modernity, does
not conform to any current mode. He is angry. Some young upstart is
sitting at his table, the table at which he has probably eaten about
fifteen thousand chops. Ancient kings must have looked like this
when they caught a virile baron trying on the crown! Insolence
and--worse! Much worse. An awful reminder to a man of habit! Some
day ... ah, well, that day has not come, and till it does he will sit
at that particular table and eat his chop with his particular knife
and fork. So he stands about glowering and fidgeting, the bland
young man calmly eating, an innocent usurper.
But the clash between man and man is as nothing compared with the
drama of a woman's entrance. Most women reach the door and
instinctively realize that they have blundered into man's last
stronghold and beat a tactful retreat, coughing slightly. Now and
again some insensitive or ignorant man actually brings a poor woman
there. Sex consciousness is a queer thing. Go into a telephone
exchange where you are the only man and see how you like it. These
women who suddenly dawn like a crime in the unwritten convention of
this place must feel it too; but women are so accustomed to scrutiny.
Is it fancy or does an uneasy silence pass like a cloud over the
babel of law, newspaper, and book talk? I wonder.
Anyhow, it is remarkable to find any place in London in which woman
is an anachronism, and no doubt the day is coming when they will
storm even this barricade and--then we may have more comfortable
chairs and nicer tables and a change in wall-paper!
Our Roman Bath
An American once told me in Vienna that the Strand possesses a Roman
bath well worth seeing, but, being a perfectly good Londoner, I did
not believe him--till I went there.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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