Not everything that Humphrey did was difficult, nor undesirable. There were times when his card with The Day on it opened the doors of high places, magically: there were many people who welcomed him, actors and playwrights and people to whom publicity such as the reporter can give is necessary. He was received by countesses who were engaged in propaganda work, and by lordlings who were interested in schemes for the alleged welfare of the people: these people wanted to be interviewed, many of them even prepared their statements beforehand. But, in spite of the advantage they gained, they always treated him with that polite restraint which the English aristocracy adopt towards the inferior classes. He obtained wonderful peeps into grand houses, with huge staircases, and enormous rooms with panelled walls and candelabra and rare pictures; into Government offices, too, when an inquiry was necessary, where permanent officials worked, heedless of the change of Ministers that went on with each new Government; and once he went into the dressing-room of Sir Wimborne Johns, that very famous actor, who shook him by the hand, and treated Humphrey as one of his best friends, and told him two funny stories while the dresser was adjusting his make-up for Act II.

Then there were the meetings—amazingly futile gatherings of people who met in the rooms of hotels, the Caxton Hall at Westminster or the Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street. These meetings gave young Humphrey an insight into the petty little vanities of life. They were hot-beds of mutual admiration. What[105] was their business and what did they achieve? Heaven only knows! They had been in existence for years; this was perhaps the seventh or eighth or twenty-sixth annual meeting of the Anti-Noise Society, and the world was not yet silent. Yet here were the old ladies and the old gentlemen and the secretary (in a frock coat) congratulating themselves on an excellent year's work, and passing votes of thanks to each other, as though they were giving lollipops to children. These meetings were all built on one scheme. They always began half an hour late, because there were so few people in the room. The reporters (and here Humphrey sometimes met Beaver) sat at a green baize-covered table near the speakers, and were given all sorts of printed matter—enough to fill the papers they represented, and, occasionally, men and women would sidle up to them, and give their visiting-cards, and say, "Be sure and get the initials right," or, "Would you like to interview me on Slavery in Cochin-China?" Then the chairman (Sir Simon Sloper) arrived, whiskered and florid-faced, and every one clapped their hands; and the secretary read letters and telegrams of regret which he passed to the reporters' table; and then they read the balance-sheet and the annual report, and Miss Heggie Petty, with the clipped accent of Forfarshire, gave her district report, and W. Black-Smith, Esq. ("Please don't forget the hyphen in The Day"), delivered his district report, and then the secretary spoke again, and the treasurer reminded them with a sternly humorous manner, that the annual subscriptions were overdue, and, finally, came the great event of the afternoon: Sir Simon Sloper rose to address the meeting. Everybody was hugely interested, except the reporters, to whom it was platitudinous and tediously stale: they had heard it all before, times without number, at all the silly little meetings of foolish people the Sir Simon Slopers had their moments of adulation and[106] their reward of a paragraph in the papers. Nothing vital, nothing of great and lasting importance, was ever done at these meetings, yet every day six or seven of them were held.

There were societies and counter societies: there was a society for the suppression of this, and a society for the encouragement of that; there was the Society for Sunday Entertainment, and the Society for Sunday Rest; every one seemed to be pulling in opposite directions, and every one imagined that his or her views were best for the people. Humphrey found the reflection of all this in the advertisement columns of The Day, where there were advertisements of lotions that grew hair on bald heads, or ointment that took away superfluous hair; medicines that made fat people thin, or pills that made thin people fat; tonics that toned down nervous, high-strung people, and phosphates that exhilarated those who were depressed. Life was a terribly ailing thing viewed through the advertisement columns; one seemed to be living in an invalid world, suffering from lumbago and nervous debility. It was a nightmare of a world, where people were either too florid or too pale, too fat or too thin, too bald or too hairy, too tall or too short ... and yet the world went on unchangingly, just as it............