CHAPTER V.A Hyde Park Sunday.
The Honourable Arthur, Salemina, and I took a stroll in Hyde Park one Sunday afternoon, not for the purpose of joining the fashionable throng of 'pretty people' at Stanhope Gate, but to mingle with the common herd in its special precincts,--precincts not set apart, indeed, by any legal formula, but by a natural law of classification which seems to be inherent in the universe.

It was a curious and motley crowd--a little dull, perhaps, but orderly, well-behaved, and self-respecting, with here and there part of the flotsam and jetsam of a great city, a ragged, sodden, hopeless wretch wending his way about with the rest, thankful for any diversion.
Under the trees, each in the centre of his group, large or small according to his magnetism and eloquence, stood the park 'shouter,' airing his special grievance, playing his special part, preaching his special creed, pleading his special cause,--anything, probably, for the sake of shouting.

We were plainly dressed, and did not attract observation as we joined the outside circle of one of these groups after another.

It was as interesting to watch the listeners as the speakers.
I wished I might paint the sea of faces, eager, anxious, stolid, attentive, happy, and unhappy: histories written on many of them; others blank, unmarked by any thought or aspiration.

I stole a sidelong look at the Honourable Arthur.