A man offered me a newspaper or something that I had dropped.
I can distinctly remember consigning the paper to a state
of irremediable spiritual ruin. I am very sorry for this now,
and I apologise both to the man and to the paper. I have not the
least idea what was the meaning of this unnatural anger; I mention
it as a psychological confession. It was immediately followed by
extreme hilarity, and I made so many silly jokes to the policeman
that he disgraced himself by continual laughter before all the
little boys in the street, who had hitherto taken him seriously.

. . . . .

There is one other odd thing about the matter which I also mention
as a curiosity of the human brain or deficiency of brain.
At intervals of about every three minutes I kept on reminding
the policeman that I had not paid the cabman, and that I hoped
he would not lose his money. He said it would be all right,
and the man would appear. But it was not until about half an hour
afterwards that it suddenly struck me with a shock intolerable
that the man might conceivably have lost more than half a crown;
that he had been in danger as well as I. I had instinctively
regarded the cabman as something uplifted above accidents, a god.
I immediately made inquiries, and I am happy to say that they
seemed to have been unnecessary.

But henceforward I shall always understand with a darker and more delicate
charity those who take tythe of mint, and anise, and cumin, and neglect
the weightier matters of the law; I shall remember how I was once really
tortured with owing half a crown to a man who might have been dead.
Some admirable men in white coats at the Charing Cross Hospital tied