"If these men are types, how London has changed!" I said to myself. But can
they be? I fear not; I fear that "exceptional" is the only word to use. Yet
it was very remarkable to meet them all on the same day, Friday, June 25th.
The first was on an omnibus. A big man with a grey beard who was alone on
the seat. Several other seats had only one passenger; the rest--mine among
them--were full. At Westminster came up a youth and a girl who very
obviously were lovers. Owing to the disposition of the seats they had to
separate, the girl subsiding into the place beside the big man immediately
in front of me. At first he said nothing, and then, just as we were passing
the scaffolding of the Cenotaph, he did something which proved him to be
very much out of the common, a creature apart. Reaching across and touching
the youth on the shoulder, he said, "Let me change places with you. I
expect you young people would like to sit together."
That was exceptional, you will agree. He was right too; the young people
did like to sit together. I could see that. And the more the omnibus rocked
and lurched the more they liked it.
The second exceptional man was a taxi-driver. I wanted to get to a certain
office before it shut, and there were very few minutes to do it in. The
driver did his best, but we arrived just too late; the door was locked.
"That's a bit of hard luck," he said. "But they're all so punctual closing
now. It's the daylight-saving does it. Makes people think of the open-air
more than they used."
As I finished paying him--no small affair, with all the new supplements--he
resumed.
"I'm sorry you had the journey for nothing," he said. "It's rough. But
never mind--have something on Comrade for the Grand Prix" (he pronounced
"Prix" to rhyme with "fix") "in France on Sunday. I'm told it's the goods.
Then you won't mind about your bad luck this afternoon. Don't forget--
Comrade to win and one, two, three."
After this I must revise my opinion of taxi-drivers, which used not to be
very high: especially as Comrade differed from most racehorses of my
acquaintance by coming in first.
The third man perhaps was more unexpected than exceptional. His
unexpectedness took the form not of benevolence but of culture. He is a
vendor of newspapers. A pleasant old fellow with a smiling weather-beaten
face, grey moustache and a cloth cap, whom I have known for most of the six
years during which he has stood every afternoon except Sundays on the kerb
between a lamp-post and a letter-box at one of London's busiest corners. I
have bought his papers and referred to the weather all that time, but I
never talked with him before. Why, I cannot say; I suppose because the hour
had not struck. On Friday, however, we had a little conversation, all
growing from the circumstance that while he was counting out change I
noticed a fat volume protruding from his coat pocket and asked him what it
was.
It was his reply that qualified him to be numbered among Friday's elect.
"That book?" he said--"that's _Barchester Towers_."