Since this new fashion of vehicle had come in, Petersham and Watson got on better together. There was a give-and-take in their present life which had never existed formerly. To obtain something or other under false pretences had been a code of morals closely interwoven with the Church Catechism and the State constitution, so that no loophole had been left through which one could see any other standpoint than one’s own. But since the contents of the shop in Oxford Street had vanished into thin air, as the chrysalis withers when the insect is formed, old Watson had lost all incentive to his pride; and old Petersham had equally lost all motive for his stinging epigrams directed at the thick-skinned Plutocrat. Charioteering through London soon showed these two types of distinct worlds that their safety depended more on their own initiative and prudence than on the police. Policemen, we know, had been dismissed, and every citizen, from the smallest child to the feeblest octogenarian, had to go through a course of thoroughfare gymnastics, so as to enable them to escape runaway horses; whilst lectures were given in Scotland Yard to instil into drivers’ minds the true sense of altruism and proper regard for the public’s safety. This new departure in outdoor polity had upset a good many pet prejudices of Watson, and knocked out a great deal of Petersham’s conceit.
Ah! There darted through Brompton Road Tom Hornsby with his comic little face cleanshaven. He was one of the few men who had taken at once to the chariot; his supple, nervous frame and perfect equipoise made him master of the art in a few hours. He was a satirist, Tom Hornsby! He had never succeeded in diplomacy, nor in his migration to the City jungle, and unable to control his outbursts of scurrilous wit, he had sharpened his tongue into a steel pen and edited the _Weekly Mirror_.
There were many more dashing along the Hammersmith Road on that lovely summer morning; some had been trained to soldiery, others to Parliamentarism, but the majority were inadequately provided with the suitable faculties with which to play the game of life. The soldiers were too spiritless, the politicians too bellicose. One little trifle had been omitted in the curriculum of a man’s education, but such a small item that it was hardly worth mentioning—for everyone agreed that to make a gentleman of a man was the great desideratum of college training—well, this little item neglected in all educations was: the training of life. This life-drill, by which all humanity is made akin, had been left out of educational programmes, and the results of such an omission had been painful; for men like Petersham and Watson would walk, dine, drink together, but they no more understood each other than if they had been two different species. Men were surprising and disappointing in this civilisation in which—