an aloof, stately, cold and unwelcome sort of place. Inside, it may be more cheerful and more friendly; a London coal fire, an English easy chair — and there are none better, or more comfortable and a low reading lamp, may take some of the chill off. Then again, one may be spoken to now and then by some other lost soul, hungry for companionship, but I doubt it. I am not going to scold. It is racial, perhaps, and the island is so small that it is dangerous to rub elbows against everybody, but I cannot, all the same, quite smother my feelings. My own clubs are scattered from Boston to Washington, with a few out West, and often as I prowl about London alone, and look up into the faces of the windows of these mausoleums, wondering what sort of men are behind them, I cannot help recalling the cozy corners of mine at home, into which are welcomed hundreds of strangers from all over the globe, and with a heartiness and sincerity that sets them to thinking. Some of them pinch themselves in amazement, wondering whether they are really awake. Yes, it must be racial; or, perhaps, the chill of countless fogs has gotten into their bones.

And with this came the thought: What a godsend Mr. Thackeray must have been to

many within its walls, and how the warmth of his geniality must have helped to thaw out that peculiar chilly reserve which in many really fine, hearty, and ready-to-be-kind Englishmen, is due neither to rudeness nor to class distinction, but simply, strange as it may appear, to innate shyness.

The blast of a siren clearing the way for a taxi which pulled up on the right at the Carlton, unloading an important personage whom Evins told me was a member of Parliament, awoke me from my reverie. The blast was intended for me, my being anchored in the middle of the unloading space reserved for the elect being nothing short of an outrage. The upholstered porter mostly in red - was evidently of this opinion, and expressed it in a concentrated glower. Evins had opinions of his own; I saw that from the way his mouth straightened quite as it did that morning off Staple Inn.

"Are we in the way, Evins?" I asked. "No, sir, we ain't; and if we was it wouldn't make no difference. Them stuffs in gold lace think they own the earth."

CHAPTER XI

COVENT GARDEN

HEN describing some highly convivial

WH

scene, Thackeray generally places his characters in one of the quaint chophouses and taverns of old London, rather than around the mahogany tables of the more famous clubs.

The cave of Harmony, fronting Covent Garden Market he knew in his youth. There to quote from "The Newcomes," "song and cup" passed merrily, and I daresay the songs and bumpers were encored.

We have his own words as proof that the tap room was near Covent Garden, for in "A Night's Pleasure" there occurs these words:

"What! is the old Cave of Harmony still extant?' I asked. 'I have not been there these twenty years.'

"And memory carried me back to the days when Lightsides, of Corpus, myself, and little Oaks, the Johnian, came up to town in a chaiseand-four, at the long vacation at the end of our