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Sometimes on our way to the office in the morning we stop in front of a jeweller’s window near Maiden Lane and watch a neat little elderly gentleman daintily setting out his employer’s gauds and trinkets for the day.  We like to see him brood cheerfully over the disposition of his small amber-coloured velvet mats, and the arrangement of the rings, vanity cases, necklaces, and precious stones.  They twinkle in the morning light, and he leans downward in the window, innocently displaying the widening parting on his pink scalp.  He purses his lips in a silent whistle as he cons his shining trifles and varies his plan of display every day.

Now a modern realist (we have a painful suspicion) if he were describing this pleasant man would deal rather roughly with him.  You know exactly how it would be done.  He would be a weary, saddened, shabby figure:  his conscientious attention to the jewels in his care would be construed as the painful and creaking routine of a victim of commercial greed; a bitter irony would be distilled from the contrast of his own modest station in life and the huge value of the lucid crystals and carbons under his hands.  His hands—­ah, the realist would angrily see some brutal pathos or unconscious naughtiness in the crook of the old mottled fingers.  How that widening parting in the gray head would be gloated upon.  It would be very easy to do, and it would be (if we are any judge) wholly false.

For we have watched the little old gentleman many times, and we have quite an affection for him.  We see him as one perfectly happy in the tidy and careful round of his tasks; and when his tenderly brushed gray poll leans above his treasures, and he gently devises new patterns by which the emeralds or the gold cigarette cases will catch the slant of 9 o’clock sunlight, we seem to see one who is enjoying his own placid conception of beauty, and who is not a figure of pity or reproach, but one of decent honour and excellent fidelity.

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One of our colleagues, a lusty genial in respect of tobacco, has told us of a magnificent way to remove an evil and noisome taste from an old pipe that hath been smoked overlong.  He says, clean the bowl carefully (not removing the cake) and wash tenderly in fair, warm water.  Then, he says, take a teaspoonful of the finest vatted Scotch whiskey (or, if the pipe be of exceeding size, a tablespoonful of the same) and pour it delicately into the bowl.  Apply a lighted match, and let the liquor burn itself out.  It will do so, he avouches, with a gentle blue flame of great beauty and serenity.  The action of this burning elixir, he maintains, operates to sizzle and purge away all impurity from the antique incrustation in the bowl.  After letting the pipe cool, and then filling it with a favourite blend of mingled Virginia, Perique, and Latakia, our friend asserts that he is blessed with a cool, saporous, and enchanting