from us, she must needs do so with violence. Such unseemly violence, in
this as in other transactions, is ours in the clinging and not hers in
the taking. For equal is the force of Fortune, and steady is her grasp,
whether she despoil the great of their noble things or strip the mean of
things ignoble, whether she take from the clutching or the yielding hand.

Strange are the little traps laid by the Londoner so as to capture an
address by the hem if he may. You would think a good address to be of
all blessings the most stationary, and one to be either gained or missed,
and no two ways about it. But not so. You shall see it waylaid at the
angles of squares, with no slight exercise of skill, delayed, entreated,
detained, entangled, intricately caught, persuaded to round a corner,
prolonged beyond all probability, pursued.

One address there will in the future be for us, and few will visit there.
It will bear the number of a narrow house. May it avow its poverty and
be poor; for the obscure inhabitant, in frigid humility, shall have no
thought nor no eye askance upon the multitude.




THE AUDIENCE


The long laugh that sometimes keeps the business of the stage waiting is
only a sign of the exchange of parts that in the theatre every night
takes place. The audience are the players. Their audience on the stage
are bound to watch them, to understand them, to anticipate them, and to
divine them. But once known and their character established in relation