to them, one wonders sometimes how it is the world continues to
exist.

Once upon a time there occurred an illness to a certain good and
great man. I read in my daily paper that the whole nation was
plunged in grief. People dining in public restaurants, on being told
the news by the waiter, dropped their heads upon the table and
sobbed. Strangers, meeting in the street, flung their arms about one
another and cried like little children. I was abroad at the time,
but on the point of returning home. I almost felt ashamed to go. I
looked at myself in the glass, and was shocked at my own appearance:
it was that of a man who had not been in trouble for weeks. I felt
that to burst upon this grief-stricken nation with a countenance such
as mine would be to add to their sorrow. It was borne in upon me
that I must have a shallow, egotistical nature. I had had luck with
a play in America, and for the life of me I could not look grief-
stricken. There were moments when, if I was not keeping a watch over
myself, I found myself whistling.

Had it been possible I would have remained abroad till some stroke of
ill-fortune had rendered me more in tune with my fellow-countrymen.
But business was pressing. The first man I talked to on Dover pier
was a Customs House official. You might have thought sorrow would
have made him indifferent to a mere matter of forty-eight cigars.
Instead of which, he appeared quite pleased when he found them. He
demanded three-and-fourpence, and chuckled when he got it. On Dover
platform a little girl laughed because a lady dropped a handbox on a
dog; but then children are always callous--or, perhaps, she had not
heard the news.