I find it very difficult to walk slowly down Bond Street as one
ought to do; I always feel so guilty. Most of the people there look
scornfully at me as if I belonged to Whitechapel, and the rest look
suspiciously at me as if I belonged to Bond Street. My clothes are
neither good enough or bad enough. So I hurry through with the tense
expression of a man who is merely using Bond Street as a thoroughfare,
because it is the way to his dentist--as indeed in my case it is. But
recently I _did_ saunter in the proper way, and I took a most thrilling
inventory of the principal classes of shops, the results of which have
now been tabulated by my statistical department.
For instance, do you know how many shops in the street sell things for
ladies to wear (not including boots, jewellery or shoes)? No? Well,
there are thirty-three. Not many, is it? But then there are twenty-one
jewellers (including pearl shops) and eight boot and/or shoe shops; so
that, with two sort of linen places, which may fairly be reckoned as
female, the ladies’ total is sixty-four. I only counted a hundred and
fifty shops altogether. Of that total, nine are places where men can
buy things to wear, and ten are places where they can buy things to
smoke; I have charitably debited all the cigarette-shops to the men,
even the ones where the cigarettes are tipped with rose-leaves and
violet petals. But even if I do that and give the men the two places
where you can buy guns and throw in the one garden-seat shop, we are
left with the following result:--