"My dear fellow," I said, with emotion, "I am bidding farewell
to forty-three hansom cabmen."

"Well," he said, "I suppose they would think this county rather
outside the radius."

"Oh, my friend," I cried brokenly, "how beautiful London is!
Why do they only write poetry about the country? I could turn
every lyric cry into Cockney.

"'My heart leaps up when I behold
A sky-sign in the sky,'

"as I observed in a volume which is too little read, founded on
the older English poets. You never saw my 'Golden Treasury Regilded;
or, The Classics Made Cockney'--it contained some fine lines.

"'O Wild West End, thou breath of London's being,'

"or the reminiscence of Keats, beginning

"'City of smuts and mellow fogfulness.';

"I have written many such lines on the beauty of London;
yet I never realized that London was really beautiful till now.
Do you ask me why? It is because I have left it for ever."

"If you will take my advice," said my friend, "you will humbly
endeavour not to be a fool. What is the sense of this mad
modern notion that every literary man must live in the country,