There is nothing like personal contact with a thing to make you understand its reality, and when the revolution knocked my hat off into the road I felt myself faced with no idle dream. There was something about the top-hat of the common or garden clerk that angered the revolutionists, and they did not seem to recognise in me a toiler like themselves. Yet the only difference was that I worked a jolly sight harder than most of them, and they little knew that at that moment I was hurrying about among them simply to take mental notes in a highly sympathetic and artistic spirit. Mine was not the only top-hat that roused their ire; in fact, they regarded this hateful but honourable head-covering as an embodiment of Capital; therefore they knocked it off whenever they saw it among them. Legally this was assault, if not battery, but they cared nothing for that, and in another and more ferocious sort of upheaval, no doubt, they would have knocked off the heads under the hats as well as the hats themselves. This, however, they did not do; in fact, the revolution, taken piecemeal, which is the only way a single pedestrian can take it, was an utter coward, for at the word “copper,” whole gangs of twenty or thirty men would evaporate, only to form again as soon as the guardians of the peace had disappeared. Such, indeed, was the celerity of the revolution when threatened with the law, that again and again the police charged thin air. Doubtless this was the result of hunger, for had the people been well fed, they would have been braver. But, of course, if they had been well fed, they would not have revolted. In fact, a revolution is a very good example of cause and effect.

My top-hat was knocked off for the third time in Oxford Street, and at the same moment somebody grabbed at my watch-chain and tried to possess themselves of my “Waterbury.” In fact, the top-hat was really a source of danger, and, at the third loss, I ignored the hat, now much the worse for wear, and left it for the younger members of the revolution to play football with. I then went on bareheaded, until reaching a small shop in a back street that had not been penetrated by the mob. Here I purchased a cloth cap of dingy appearance and a brown muffler, and, thus accoutered, I plunged into the fray once more.

The men in Oxford Street were armed with stones, and when a private carriage passed down the way, they broke the windows. The hansom, the harmless four-wheeler, and the groaning omnibus they did not molest; but a private carriage awoke their worst passions, and they smashed the windows, utterly regardless of the harm they might be doing to the occupant—fair or otherwise.

Disguised as one of themselves with the cap and muffler, I was no further molested, and spent an hour or two among the people, to find that, as the day advanced, they began to cool down. It seemed as if the fever of battle was burning itself out, and when there rose a rumour that the troops had been called into the streets to help the police, a great change came o’er the spirit of the scene. The revolution hated to hear about the soldiers, because, of course, it was by no means ready for any such violent measures. In fact, so far as I was concerned, the incident was now at an end, and I returned home to Aunt Augusta full of my great intelligence. She had been painting rather industriously all day and had heard nothing of the peril that had threatened the metropolis. We talked a great deal about it, and she much regretted my top-hat and the events that had led to its destruction; but, womanlike, a little personal trifle interested her far more than the calamity that promised to shake the forces of Capital and Labour to the core, and very likely convulse the civilised world; and this was the trifling accident of my birthday.

I was, in fact, eighteen, and Aunt Augusta had already wished me many happy returns of the day and given me a present of an original and very beautiful water-colour drawing of the Thames at Westminster. But now she returned to the subject, though I tried to choke her off it and explained that after one reaches man’s estate these accidental anniversaries are better forgotten.

“If you don’t remember anything that doesn’t matter,” I said to her, “then you have all the more room in your memory for everything that does.”

But she insisted on making a stir about my natal day, and since London was too unsettled, in her opinion, to go to a theatre, she decided to have a lively evening at home, beginning with a dinner of unusual variety and style. She was rather a classy cook and had learned the science when an art student in Paris; so she sent out Jane to get supplies, and asked me if I thought I could venture out, too, and buy a bottle of champagne. I felt secretly that, owing to the hunger and so on of the masses, one ought not to be drinking champagne on a night like this. It was that sort of callous indifference that caused the French Revolution, and I told Aunt Augusta that if the proletariat knew what she and I were up to, they might very likely swoop upon her flat and ransack it, or set it on fire. But she answered, very truly, that the proletariat would not know, and as to have argued further would have laid me under suspicion of cowardice, I went out to buy the sparkling beverage and bring it home. Luckily for the banquet, Aunt Augusta had received rather a swagger commission for four of her etchings the day before, and so she was out of sympathy with the sufferings of the people and in sympathy with the anniversary of my birth.

We had a great time in a gastronomic sense. The meal embraced mock-turtle soup, an omelette with herbs chopped up in it, a pheasant and chipped potatoes, an apple tart and tinned apricots, anchovies on toast, pears, and a pineapple—all, of course, washed down with the juice of the grape and coffee.

Champagne is a most hopeful wine, which you can have sweet or dry, and after drinking a full glass, I began to suggest plans for improving the state of the proletariat, accompanied by a suspicion that their condition was not so bad as they wanted us to think. I talked a great deal to Aunt Augusta, and smoked a whole packet of cigarettes. She also smoked and drank her coffee and listened to me intently.

Presently, I began to discuss myself and my career, and thanked her very heartily for helping it forward to the best of her power, as she was doing.

She was kind enough to say that I had brought a great deal of pleasure into her life, and she didn’t know what she would do without me when I started rooms on my own account. I allayed her fears in this matter and promised I would not leave her for at least another year.

“From eighteen till nineteen you may count upon me,” I said, “though after another year has passed, I don’t know what may happen, because life is so full of surprises.”

I then retraced the year, from the day that Doctor Dunston had sent for me to see him and I thought it was fireworks, up to the present moment in the throes of the revolution. It seemed almost impossible that so much could happen in the time; and as I smoked and indulged in a retrospect, as the saying is, I felt that the battle of life had been fought almost day and night. It had not yet been won, exactly, but there seemed fair reason to expect that with luck it soon would be.

In fact, the champagne made me decidedly too pleased with all I had done, and I believe, if the truth could have been known, that I talked rather big to Aunt Augusta and was on better terms with myself than the occasion demanded.

I began to sketch out my programme of life for my eighteenth year, and there is no doubt that it was too ambitious. At any rate, Aunt Augusta evidently felt that I was planning more than I could perform, and she turned my thoughts into another channel.

“Of course all sorts of delightful new things will happen to you,” she said, “but it would be a pity to forget the adventures you have already had.”

“I shall never forget them,” I assured her; but she told me that memory played tricks with the wisest people, and strongly advised me to spend some few spare evenings in writing a diary of the past, while it was fresh in mind.

“It would be of great help to your next brother,” she told me. “He’ll be coming to London from Merivale in another eighteen months or so, and he’d love to hear all that has happened to you.”

In fact, Aunt Augusta openly advised a diary founded upon the past, and though my feeling is always to let the past bury the past and be pushing forward to fresh fields and pastures new, as the poet has it, still, there are many people—generally of the female sex—who take a great interest in looking back to the time when they were younger, and mourning their golden prime—though it probably wasn’t half as golden really as it seems to them, looking back at it. Therefore, solely to please my Aunt Augusta, I fell in with this suggestion and allowed myself to retrace my first wavering steps in the worlds of art and finance.

I set down the bare, unvarnished tale and told the simple truth as far as I could remember it. I preserved the aloof attitude of the born raconteur, and allowed my dramatis personÆ to flit across the page in the habit in which they lived. I don’t think I forgot anybody, and tried to deal impartially with them all. I told of my dinner with Mr. Pepys and his sister, of the official life, enriched with the ripe humanity of Mr. Westonshaugh, the generous friendship of Mr. Blades and the various characteristics of Dicky Travers, the hero of the L.A.C.; Bassett, the martial; Wardle, the musical; Tomlinson, the equine; and Bent, the horticultural. I told of my experiences with the shady customer, and on the cinder-path and the cricket-field. I retraced my approach to the drama, and the grey-eyed girl, and Brightwin, and Mr. Smith, and the others, crowned by the soaring figure of Mr. Montgomery Merridew.

Then I chronicled the glad hour when I repaired to our West-End Branch and was lifted to the friendship of Mr. Walter and Mr. Bright; and lastly, I set down my earliest experience on the paths of literature, in connection with tragic poetry and dramatic criticism.

By a happy thought, I presented the manuscript of this “crowded hour of glorious life,” as the poet has it, to Aunt Augusta on her own birthday. In fact, the thirty-eighth anniversary of that auspicious event was gladdened for her by the gift of my diary.

I rejoice to say that it afforded her pleasure, but regret to add that it was not the sort of pleasure I intended.

“Life, from the angle of seventeen, is so dreadfully funny—seen from the angle of thirty-eight,” she assured me—though why it should be “funny” she was not apparently able to explain.

“It may be interesting, but I don’t see anything particularly funny about it, Aunt Augusta,” I answered, slightly hurt at the adjective.

She did not attempt to argue, but continued:

“You must promise me to write your eighteenth year, too,” she said. “It will be something for your old aunt to look forward to. You must promise faithfully.”

“That depends,” I answered rather coldly. “Life is life, and I find it a serious thing, though it may seem ‘dreadfully funny’ to you, Aunt Augusta. Anyhow, funny or not funny, I shall not butcher my eighteenth year to make a Roman holiday, as they say. Important things must happen to me in my eighteenth year. Nobody can get through their eighteenth year without important events; but if you think———”

“Forgive me,” she said. “I didn’t mean it for a moment. It’s a lovely diary, and I shall always treasure it, and I wouldn’t have a word altered—and it’s my birthday, so you mustn’t be cross.”

Well, I forgave her; because she’s really a jolly old thing, and of the greatest assistance to me behind the scenes, so to speak. Besides, everybody knows that the feminine sense of humour is merely dust and ashes. No doubt, if I had written with badinage or pleasantry, in a light and transient vein, enlivened by sparks of persiflage and burlesque, she would have taken it in a tearful spirit and cried over it.

But only a woman can laugh at the naked truth; men know it’s a jolly sight too serious. To laugh at my diary was the act of the same woman who drank champagne on the night of the revolution. We must remember that they are not as we are, and treat them accordingly.