Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. II, 1889.djvu/159

 CHAPTER VIII.

DEATH THE RECONCILER.

is no accounting for tastes. Sidney Kirkwood, spending his Sunday evening in a garden away there in the chawbacon regions of Essex, where it was so deadly quiet that you could hear the flutter of a bird's wing or the rustle of a leaf, not once only congratulated himself on his good fortune; yet at that hour he might have stood, as so often, listening to the eloquence, the wit, the wisdom, that give proud distinction to the name of Clerkenwell Green. Towards sundown, that modern Agora rang with the voices of orators, swarmed with listeners, with disputants, with mockers, with indifferent loungers. The circle closing about an agnostic lecturer intersected with one gathered for a prayer-meeting; the roar of an enthusiastic