Essays on Life 



fortune to meet ; he is an engineer now, and 

 does not know one note from another ; he has 

 quite lost his deafness, is married, and is, of 

 course, a little squat man with the same re- 

 fractory hair that he always had. It was very 

 interesting to watch him, and Jones remarked 

 that before the end of dinner he had become 

 positively posthumous. One morning I was 

 told the Beethovens were going away, and 

 before long I met their two heavy boxes 

 being carried down the stairs. The boxes 

 were so squab and like their owners, that I 

 half thought for a moment that they were 

 inside, and should hardly have been surprised 

 to see them spring up like a couple of Jacks- 

 in-the-box. " Sono indentro ? " said I, with 

 a frown of wonder, pointing to the boxes. 

 The porters knew what I meant, and laughed. 

 But there is no end to the list of people whom 

 I have been able to recognise, and before 1 

 had got through it myself, I found I had 

 walked some distance, and had involuntarily 

 paused in front of a second-hand bookstall. 

 I do not like books. I believe I have the 



smallest library of any literary man in London, 



30 



