the beginning of the discussion, but at last got drawn into it, and
finished by roaring out very loud, and damning all the rest for
fools; after which befel a period of noise, and then a lull, during
which the aforesaid section, having said good-night very amicably,
took his way home by himself to a western suburb, using the means of
travelling which civilisation has forced upon us like a habit. As he
sat in that vapour-bath of hurried and discontented humanity, a
carriage of the underground railway, he, like others, stewed
discontentedly, while in self-reproachful mood he turned over the
many excellent and conclusive arguments which, though they lay at his
fingers' ends, he had forgotten in the just past discussion. But
this frame of mind he was so used to, that it didn't last him long,
and after a brief discomfort, caused by disgust with himself for
having lost his temper (which he was also well used to), he found
himself musing on the subject-matter of discussion, but still
discontentedly and unhappily. "If I could but see a day of it," he
said to himself; "if I could but see it!"

As he formed the words, the train stopped at his station, five
minutes' walk from his own house, which stood on the banks of the
Thames, a little way above an ugly suspension bridge. He went out of
the station, still discontented and unhappy, muttering "If I could
but see it! if I could but see it!" but had not gone many steps
towards the river before (says our friend who tells the story) all
that discontent and trouble seemed to slip off him.

It was a beautiful night of early winter, the air just sharp enough
to be refreshing after the hot room and the stinking railway
carriage. The wind, which had lately turned a point or two north of
west, had blown the sky clear of all cloud save a light fleck or two