tragedy was a masquerade got up by that pair to victimize the
sentimental American stranger, and do him out of one of his ill-got
shillings, I will not gainsay him. I merely maintain, as I have always
done, that the conditions are alike in the Old World and the New, and
that the only difference is in the circumstances, which may be better
now in New York, and now in London, while the conditions are always bad
everywhere for the poor. That is a point on which I shall not yield to
any more scientific student of civilization. But in the mean time my
light mind was taken from that dolorous pair to another pair on the
grass of the slope not far off in front of me.

Hard by the scene of this pathetic passage a pair of quite well-dressed
young people had thrown themselves, side by side, on the September grass
as if it had been the sand at any American seashore, or the embrowned
herbage of Hyde Park in July. Perhaps the shelving ground was dryer than
the moist levels where the professional unemployed lay in scores; but I
do not think it would have mattered to that tender pair if it had been
very damp; so warmly were they lapped in love's dream, they could not
have taken cold. The exile could only note the likeness of their
open-air love-making to that in public places at home, and contrast it
with the decorum of Latin countries where nothing of the kind is known.
If anything, English lovers of this type are franker than with us,
doubtless because of the greater simplicity of the English nature; and
they seem to be of a better class. One day when I was sitting in a penny
chair in Green Park, the agent of the company came and collected the
rent of me. I thought it a hardship, for I had purposely chosen an
inconspicuous situation where I should not be found, and it was long
past the end of the season, when no company should have had the heart to
collect rent for its chairs. But I met my fate without murmuring, and as
the young man who sold me a ticket good for the whole day at a penny,