Page:On everything.djvu/109

A Reconstruction of the Past their trade, with which we must imagine them from time to time threatening the passers-by. All, I say, are hurrying eastward to their respective avocations in the working part of this great hive.

"Appearing as rarer units we perceive members of the second or middle class proceeding at a more leisurely and dignified pace towards their professional or commercial pursuits, the haunts of which lie less to the eastward and more in the centre of the city. These are dressed entirely in black, and wear upon their heads the round hat to which one of my colleagues erroneously gave the title of a religious emblem, a position from which, I am glad to see, he has recently receded. Nothing is more striking in the scene than the absolute uniformity of this costume. In the right hand is carried, according to the ritual of a secret society to which the greater part of this class belong, a staff or tube. The left hand grasps a roll of printed paper which we may premise without too much phantasy to be the original news-sheet from which the innumerable forgeries and copies of the succeeding dark ages proceeded. We are, of course, ignorant of its name, but we may accept it as the prototype of that vast mass of printed matter which purports to be contemporary in date, but which recent scholarship has definitely proved to be of far later origin. Beyond these, but in numbers certainly few, the exact extent of which I shall discuss in a moment, are the upper classes, or Gentry. How many they may 93