We are of accord in the Quarter on the subject of its charm and the advantage of preserving it,--though on all others we may and do disagree absolutely and continually fight. I have heard even our postman brag of the beauty of its architecture and the fame of the architects who built it more than a century and a half ago, and I do not believe as a rule that London postmen could say who built the houses where they deliver their letters, or that it would occur to them to pose as judges of architecture. Because we love the Quarter we watch over it with unceasing vigilance. We are always on the look-out for nuisances and alert to suppress them. In fact, if not in name, we constitute a sort of League for the Prevention of Dirt and Disorder in the Quarter. There is a distinct understanding that, in an emergency, we may rely upon one another for mutual support, which is the easier as we all have the same Landlord and can make the same Agent's life a martyrdom until the evil is remedied. The one thing we guard most zealously is the quiet, the calm, conducive to work. We wage war to the death against street noises of every kind. No "German Band" would invade our silent precincts. The hurdy-gurdy is anathema,--I have always thought the Suffragettes' attempt to play it through our streets their bravest deed. If we endure the bell of the muffin man on Sunday and the song of the man who wants us to buy his blooming lavender, it is because both have the sanction of age. We make no other concession, and our severity extends to the native no less than to the alien. When, in the strip of green and gravel below my windows, the members of our frivolous Club took to shooting themselves with blank cartridges in the intervals of fencing, though the noise was on the miniature scale of their pistols, we overwhelmed the unfortunate Agent with letters until a stop was put to it. When our Territorials, in their first ardour, chose our catacombs for their evening bugle-practice, we rose as one against them. Beggars, unless they ring boldly at our front doors and pretend to be something else, must give up hope when they enter the Quarter. For if the philosopher thinks angels and men are in no danger from charity, we do not, and least of all the lady opposite, to whom alms-giving in our street is as intolerable as donkeys on the green were to Betsy Trotwood. One of my friends has never dared to come to see me, except by stealth, since the day she pounced upon him to ask him what he meant by such an exhibition of immorality, when all he had done was to drop a penny into the hand of a small boy at his cab-door, and all he had meant was a kindly fellow feeling, having once been a small boy himself.