Teidelmann, talked with him as much aside as the circumstances of the
case would permit. Hasluck never wasted time on anything else than
business. It was in his opera box on the first night of Verdi's Aida
(I am speaking of course of days then to come) that he arranged the
details of his celebrated deal in guano; and even his very religion,
so I have been told and can believe, he varied to suit the enterprise
of the moment, once during the protracted preliminaries of a cocoa
scheme becoming converted to Quakerism.

But for the most of us interest lay in a discussion between Washburn
and Florret concerning the superior advantages attaching to residence
in the East End.

As a rule, incorrect opinion found itself unable to exist in Dr.
Florret's presence. As no bird, it is said, can continue its song
once looked at by an owl, so all originality grew silent under the
cold stare of his disapproving eye. But Dr. "Fighting Hal" was no
gentle warbler of thought. Vehement, direct, indifferent, he swept
through all polite argument as a strong wind through a murmuring wood,
carrying his partisans with him further than they meant to go, and
quite unable to turn back; leaving his opponents clinging
desperately--upside down, anyhow--to their perches, angry, their
feathers much ruffled.

"Life!" flung out Washburn--Dr. Florret had just laid down
unimpeachable rules for the conduct of all mankind on all
occasions--"what do you respectable folk know of life? You are not
men and women, you are marionettes. You don't move to your natural
emotions implanted by God; you dance according to the latest book of
etiquette. You live and love, laugh and weep and sin by rule. Only