The mind of man is subject to many strange delusions, and one of these is that the stock market has a bottom. * * * The manufacturer of a certain automobile advertises that his vehicle "will hold five ordinary people." And, as a matter of fact, it usually does. * * * The Westminster Gazette headlines "The Intolerable Dullness of Country Life in Ireland." And Irene wonders what they would call excitement. * * * An advertisement of dolls mentions, superfluously, that "some may not last the day." One does not expect them to. * * * The London Mendicity Society estimates that £100,000 is given away haphazard every year to street beggars, and that the average beggar probably earns more than the average working man. There is talk of the beggars forming a union. A beggars' strike would be a fearsome thing. * * * I want to be a diplomat And with the envoys stand, A-wetting of my whistle in A desiccated land. The London Busman Story. _I.--As George Meredith might have related it._ "Stop!" she signalled. The appeal was comprehensible, and the charioteer, assiduously obliging, fell to posture of checking none too volant steeds. You are to suppose her past meridian, nearer the twilight of years, noteworthy rather for matter than manner; and her visage, comparable to the beef of England's glory, well you wot. This one's descent was mincing, hesitant, adumbrating dread of disclosures--these expectedly ample, columnar, massive. The day was gusty, the breeze prankant; petticoats, bandbox, umbrella were to be conciliated, managed if possible; no light task, you are to believe. "'Urry, marm!" The busman's tone was patiently admonitory, dispassionate. A veteran in his calling, who had observed the ascending and descending of a myriad matrons, in playful gales. "'Urry, marm!" The fellow was without illusions; he had reviewed more twinkling columns than a sergeant of drill. Indifference his note, leaning to ennui. He said so, bluntly, piquantly, in half a dozen memorable words, fetching yawn for period. The lady jerked an indignant exclamation, and completed, rosily precipitate, her passage to the pave. _II.--As Henry James might have written it._ We, let me ask, what are we, the choicer of spirits as well as the more frugal if not the undeservedly impoverished, what, I ask, are we to do now that the hansom has disappeared, as they say, from the London streets and the taxicab so wonderfully yet extravagantly taken its place? Is there, indeed, else left for us than the homely but hallowed 'bus, as we abbreviatedly yet all so affectionately term it--the 'bus of one's earlier days, when London was new to the unjaded sensorium and "Europe" was so wonderfully, so beautifully dawning on one's so avid and sensitive consciousness?