Since this preoccupation, this curiosity, this nostalgia, has exercised so enormous a fascination in the past, I found it not impossible to imagine some modern favourite of fortune falling a victim to this malady of the soul; until at last, growing weary of other satisfactions, he might be drawn to open for himself the dark portal and join the inhabitants of that dim region, "Kings and Counsellors of the earth, Princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver." This, as I say, was the notion that haunted me, the link my imagination forged between Sir Eustace Carr's presence in that dark Venetian church, and his self-caused death some years later. But whether it is really a clue to that unexplained mystery, or whether it is nothing more than a somewhat sinister fancy, of course, I cannot say. _The Lord Mayor_ An arctic wind was blowing; it cut through me as I stood there. The boot-black was finishing his work and complaints. "But I should be 'appy, sir, if only I could make four bob a day," he said. I looked down at him; it seemed absurd, the belief of this crippled, half-frozen creature, that four-shillings would make him happy. Happiness! the fabled treasure of some far-away heaven I thought it that afternoon; not to be bought with gold, not of this earth! I said something to this effect. But four shillings a day was enough for the boot-black. "Why," he said, "I should be as 'appy as the Lord Mayor!" _The Burden_ I know too much; I have stuffed too many of the facts of History and Science into my intellectuals. My eyes have grown dim over books; believing in geological periods, cave-dwellers, Chinese Dynasties, and the fixed stars has prematurely aged me. Why am I to blame for all that is wrong in the world? I didn't invent Sin and Hate and Slaughter. Who made it my duty anyhow to administer the Universe, and keep the planets to their Copernican courses? My shoulders are bent beneath the weight of the firmament; I grow weary of propping up, like Atlas, this vast and erroneous Cosmos. _Under An Umbrella_ From under the roof of my umbrella I saw the washed pavement lapsing beneath my feet, the news-posters lying smeared with dirt at the crossings, the tracks of the busses in the liquid mud. On I went through this dreary world of wetness. And through how many rains and years shall I still hurry down wet streets--middle-aged, and then, perhaps, very old? And on what errands? Asking myself this cheerless question I fade from your vision, Reader, into the distance, sloping my umbrella against the wind. THE END