Outside is the roar of
traffic; inside, the presses groan, not always without reason.
My appointment with the august and retiring controller of the great
English journal--the Jupiter who directs its thunderbolts, determines
the size of type appropriate to every correspondent, and latterly has
added to the gaiety of nations by offering a tilting-space to the
ATTORNEY-GENERAL and Mr. GIBSON BOWLES--my appointment being at three
o'clock I was careful to reach the office a few minutes before that
hour, because I like to have time to look around and collect those
little details of environment and atmosphere which are so valuable in
themselves as to make it almost immaterial whether the person I am to
interview speaks at all.
Entering the offices, which can be described only as palatial, I was
struck by the thoughtfulness--no doubt appertaining to the head of the
establishment who was so soon, for the first time in history, to grant
me an audience--which had provided a parallelogram of some fibrous
material for the purpose of removing the mud from one's boots. A minute
later I was again delighted by the discovery of an ingenious contrivance
in the shape of a kind of peg or hook on which a hat and coat could
be placed. It is by just such minutiae as these that one place is
distinguished from another and character indicated.
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