. . . . .

I looked at the strange cabman as he lessened in the distance
and the mists. I do not know whether I was right in fancying
that although his face had seemed so honest there was something
unearthly and demoniac about him when seen from behind.
Perhaps he had been sent to tempt me from my adherence to those
sanities and certainties which I had defended earlier in the day.
In any case it gave me pleasure to remember that my sense of reality,
though it had rocked for an instant, had remained erect.


VI

An Accident

Some time ago I wrote in these columns an article called
"The Extraordinary Cabman." I am now in a position to
contribute my experience of a still more extraordinary cab.
The extraordinary thing about the cab was that it did not like me;
it threw me out violently in the middle of the Strand.
If my friends who read the DAILY NEWS are as romantic (and as rich)
as I take them to be, I presume that this experience is not uncommon.
I suppose that they are all being thrown out of cabs, all over London.
Still, as there are some people, virginal and remote from the world,
who have not yet had this luxurious experience, I will give
a short account of the psychology of myself when my hansom cab
ran into the side of a motor omnibus, and I hope hurt it.

I do not need to dwell on the essential romance of the hansom cab--