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 property of the Empress of China, to cross the street and buy a box of water colors for her youngest nephew.

Certainly she was a very dear old lady; but the heir to the barony cursed her bitterly, as, gold hunting repeater in hand, he vowed that the kids would not be in time for the rising of the curtain. Part of his blame overflowed upon the head of Constable X; and we ourselves concur in this, because we certainly think that, if stop the traffic he must, it behooved him, as the appointed guardian of the public peace, to take the number of this guilty chauffeur.

As it was, the driver of the taxi, owing to this dereliction of duty upon the part of Constable X—a kind man certainly, and about to become a sergeant—sat down again in the saddle and proceeded to let her out a bit further. So that anon, swinging along that perilous place where four-and-twenty metropolitan ways converge, yclept Hyde Park Corner, he came within an ace of running down a perfectly blameless young man in an old bowler hat and a reach-me-down, the author of this narrative, who was on his way to consult with his respected publisher as to whether a work of ripe philosophy would do as well in the autumn as in the spring.

The young man in the old bowler hat—old but good of its kind, purchased of Mr. Lock in the street of Saint James on the strength of "the success of the