There had been something in his manner of speech which had arrested my attention from the first moment I heard his voice. There was a refinement in the tone that seemed to be in ill-keeping with the man and his occupation. But to quote "Lear," and correctly!

My umbrella was now kept in bounds safe beneath the restraining rubber.

Let winds be shrill, let wave roll high, I fear not wave nor wind.

Again the gutter merchant. Byron, and "Childe Harold!"

I scanned him curiously, carefully tucking the new edition of the Rubáiyát I had just purchased under my arm to excuse my hesitation.

"Omar Khayyám, I see, sir!" He smiled and nodded towards the book. "A sweet singer-aye, a sweet singer," he added softly, almost reverently.

I was startled. What manner of man was this to sell boot-laces and such trifles in the gutter of a London street?

His clothes were old but clean and tidy. No two buttons of his coat or vest were alike in pattern, but there were none missing. There were numerous patches in all his outer garments, but no holes, no tatters. His boots, moreover, were polished till my own looked dingy by comparison. was becoming interested. I raised my hand to my clean-shaven chin and looked at him boldly but curiously. His eyes followed mine; intelligent eyes, with just a suspicion of a merry twinkle in their brown depths. Then my eyes fell till they rested on his shaggy, straggling beard. I saw his hand-a white, refined hand, I had time to notice-go up to his beard and tug at it sharply.

"Beards are an abomination, but shaving is a luxury," he said.

"Omar Khayyám is a luxury, too, my friend," I responded.

"Yes, for such as I," came the reply, with just a tinge of bitterness.

I felt sorry I had spoken so carelessly.

"It swallowed up the profit on a lot of umbrella rings to buy it," he said, pulling out of his coat pocket another copy of the Rubáiyát.

"A week of short commons, since repaid by a continual feast," he said, tapping the cover lovingly; and then, with the glitter of the poet enthusiast in his eye, he quoted:

A book of verses underneath the bough, A jug of wine, a loaf of bread-and thou

Beside me singing in the wilderness. Oh! Wilderness were Paradise enow!

"Laces! key rings! umbrella rings!" He had moved on to fresh customers. I thought for a moment and then reluctantly went on my way.

"This world is a curious place, Louis," I remarked to my friend Lambient as we sat smoking after dinner that same evening.

"Queen Anne is dead," he murmured, blowing out a cloud of smoke and watching it as it curled and weaved above him in steel blue rings.

I ignored the sneer. It was Louis' way; he, the smart junior of an old firm of lawyers, was sometimes too smart to be pleasant.

"I bought an umbrella ring from a gutter merchant to-day who quoted Shakespeare, Byron and Omar Khayyám while I waited."

I paused to give Louis the opportunity of showing an interest in my curious "find." He yawned.

"My dear Hal," he said slowly, "London is full of such commonplace people. The real curiosity is the man who is not a curiosity." He lay back in his

easy-chair to give me a chance of reflecting on his paradox.

After a short pause he went on:"Find a man who always fits his place like the round peg in a round hole-a man with one nature, with not an idea or attribute above or below his environment-then label him "valuable," and place him in a museum of rare curios. He would be worth it, my friend-he would, indeed."

"I deny," I said sharply, "that my 'find' is commonplace. Just reflect-a poetical gutter merchant!"

"Ah! it is only a question of degree; he may not be so common a type as the caddish nobleman, the lying parson, or the studious scavenger, but he is commonplace nevertheless."

There was another pause. Then Louis sat up in his chair.

"Do you know, Hal, I have long wished to meet a fool?"

"Most lawyers have the same desire," I interrupted.

"A fool," he went on undisturbed, "who is always a fool. I have met a few really capital fools, but sooner or later they have all, save one, ceased to interest me, because they inconsistently had sensible intervals. The consistent one-natured man is a rarity."

"You admit finding one?"

"Yes, a client of ours. Don't reply that that proves the case; it is too obvious a retort and lacking in humor.

"He commenced life early as a fool," Louis resumed, "persevered, and is still in the same line of business, if I can judge from our experience of him. A man named Withington. In his very young days he fell madly in love with the most notorious flirt in the Midlands. He was too great a fool to realize that she was fooling him. In due course he proposed, but she laughed his love to scorn.

"Still consistent, he persevered till she killed his hopes by marrying a flash adventurer with little money and

He

less character. Had Withington had but one sensible interval he would have gayly laughed and become 'an intimate friend of the family.' left England, however, confiding his affairs to my firm. We heard occasionally from him, and having realized all his assets by his instructions, forwarded, from time to time, remittances to his Continental quarters. He evidently went the pace, for the comparatively large sum we had held rapidly dwindled under his repeated calls. At last he returned. His foolishness was still with him, for his first inquiry was for the woman who had ridiculed his love.

"The cruelty of her husband had weakened her mind, until, when he died a felon, she became mad and was confined in a pauper lunatic asylum.

"This we told him, but the fool immediately instructed us to find a private home for her, and to invest and take in trust such of his capital as would provide this for her till her death.

"There was little or nothing left for Withington after this had been settled. We never hear from him now, but we occasionally send him reports as to her well-being under cover to an address we have.

"Now I call that man a consistent fool," Louis said decisively; "a greater curiosity than your peddler, and a man with one nature."

"Yes," I answered, "a nature to be envied."

We drifted into other matters and the peddler was forgotten.

For many days I stopped, as opportunity came, to speak with the gutter merchant. He resented curiosity, I soon discovered, but was willing, nay, eager, to speak of books-always books -never of himself.

It was a strange acquaintance, but it ripened as my inquisitiveness grew. For his part he saw in me only a fel

uever more, washed down with water, and I dare not offer him the means for better fare.

Truly he was a strange fellow, but a man, if ever one lived.

The summer came with its stifling heat, and went; the autumn too was rapidly giving place to winter's chill, that horror of the half-clad gutter merchants. Tom, as I had got to call him, changed not, neither did his clothing.

Through heat and cold he wore the same, a proof he had none other.

I had occasion to leave town for a month in November, and on my return passed down the Strand to chat with Tom. He was not there. I turned that way again on the next day and on the next, but he still was missing. stood on the curb and pondered. Was he ill?-perhaps dead!

I

"Yer a lookin' fer Shakespeare Tom, ain't yer, guv'ner?"

I turned and saw the grinning face of a paper boy whose "pitch" was next to Tom's.

"He's a injying of 'isself, 'e is," the boy laughed outright. "Bin drunk fer a week, lor luv yer."

I could have struck that boy in the face as he thus shattered my idol.

Slowly I made my way to Tom's attic. Even as I reached his door 1 heard him quoting Omar Khayyám, but the voice was thick, the tone changed; there was a hiccup here and there which sadly destroyed the "sweet singer":

Yesterday this day's madness did prepare; To-morrow's silence, triumph, or despair;

Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why;

Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.

I opened the door. Was that Tom who, with all the fire and clear light of intelligence in his eyes quenched by drink, bade me enter?

"Pryin'-hic-as-usual-hic-eh?”

I turned on my heel and left him, nor returned again till a week had passed.

God forgive me for being such a coward! I might have saved him, for now he was dying.

"A spell of hard drinking on a halfstarved stomach," was the doctor's comment, shrugging his shoulders, as he and I together watched the wasted grey face of Shakespeare Tom.

"He won't last till to-morrow." Tom opened his eyes and saw me. A smile flickered across his lips, and in a scarcely audible voice he murmured:

For some we loved, the loveliest and the best

That from his vintage rolling Time hath prest,

Have drunk their cup a round or two before,

And one by one crept silently to rest.

He put out his hand and faintly gripped mine-the grip of friendship he meant it for-and I turned away my face so that no one might see it. Hour after hour I watched the shadows deepening; the grey mask of death coming slowly; and his hand was still in mine.

Once I watched his lips move, and then I caught a soft murmur:Temple Bar.

Repentance fling:

The bird of time has but a little way To flutter-and the bird is on the wing.

Then a long sigh, and I knew the bird was truly on the wing-the soul of Shakespeare Tom had taken flight.

"William Withington is his full name, I believe," said the doctor at my elbow with open note-book in hand.

I said "Yes." I knew not why, but with the flood of light that seemed to suddenly illumine that dead body and the attic came conviction.

On my way home, pondering over that strange man, I fell in with Lambient. He stopped me.

"You remember that consistent, curious fool Withington, I told you of?" I nodded wearily.

"His old flame died a month ago.” "Oh!" I simply said.

"We have sent him the balance of the 'trust.' I'll bet you a fiver he will still be consistent, and play the fool with the money."

"No," I said, moving away, "he's dead!" and in my mind rose still one more stanza of the Persian:

Why all the saints and sages who discuss'd

Of the two worlds so wisely-they are thrust

Like foolish prophets forth; their words to scorn Are scattered, and their mouths are stopt with-dust.

Harry Hesford.

Some little time since I chanced to be at sunset in a long and manywindowed west-facing gallery. As the sun swung round and down towards the horizon, the brilliant light died out in window after window. Finally, and, as it seemed, with dis

turbing suddenness, the last was ob scured, and dusk settled down in the place.

It occurred to me then that this gallery typified our century. In a Versailles we may chase for a time the sunlight from room to room, but in our