OF US, A HARP AND A SPANISH JUG 3 



resembles a young child, which, when it has been 

 washed and fed and has slept and has been washed 

 and fed once more, becomes something adorable 

 and entirely different from the curse of yesterday's 

 railway travel. 



The harp-case has power to turn smiling, 

 kindly, bearded men into brutal Grobians. They 

 fetch out the trunks with a jest ; whistling, load 

 their barrows with sausages and telescopic baskets. 

 "Anything more, sir?" they ask alertly. "There 

 is only," I reply, with my forced smile, "a harp." 

 And the weather changes for the worse. Two, 

 three, four of them bend their enormous muscles 

 to the toil. I see their honest faces redden, grow 

 purple. I hear muttered words which I recognise 

 as popular expressions of hate. While elevating 

 their outrageous fardel to the roof of our con- 

 veyance they give themselves permanent strains. 

 They rupture their abdominal walls. They be- 

 come out-patients at infirmaries and bind them- 

 selves in trusses. They lose their situations. 

 Their children starve. Their sticks are sold up. 

 At least, I imagine all these things happening. 



And to change these sour-faced, fainting, loath- 

 ing, blasphemous enemies back into friends, what 

 sums are needful ! 



I do not mind the loss of money- the harp is 

 ready for the road but the thought of these 



