learned, and if I did not feel that it must have been said before,
it is so apt, I should quote Horace, and say, 'Omnibus hoc vitium
est.' There is no 'bus unseized by the Napoleonic Lipton. Do not
ascend one of them supposing for a moment that by paying fourpence
and going to the very end of the route you will come to a neat tea
station, where you will be served with the cheering cup. Never; nor
with a draught of Cadbury's cocoa or Nestle's milk, although you
have jostled along for nine weary miles in company with their
blatant recommendations to drink nothing else, and though you may
have passed other 'buses with the same highly-coloured names glaring
at you until they are burned into the grey matter of your brain, to
remain there as long as the copy-book maxims you penned when you
were a child.

These pictorial methods doubtless prove a source of great financial
gain; of course it must be so, or they would never be prosecuted;
but although they may allure millions of customers, they will lose
two in our modest persons. When Salemina and I go into a cafe for
tea we ask the young woman if they serve Lipton's, and if they say
yes, we take coffee. This is self-punishment indeed (in London!),
yet we feel that it may have a moral effect; perhaps not
commensurate with the physical effect of the coffee upon us, but
these delicate matters can never be adjusted with absolute
exactitude.

Sometimes when we are to travel on a Pears' Soap 'bus we buy
beforehand a bit of pure white Castile, cut from a shrinking,
reserved, exclusive bar with no name upon it, and present it to some
poor woman when we arrive at our journey's end. We do not suppose
that so insignificant a protest does much good, but at least it