I will not pretend to a full knowledge of that strange education of the mind which has produced so many similar men for the advancement of the race, but I can point to one example which lately came straight across my vision—an accident, an illumination, a revealing flash of how our time breeds the Great Type. I was acquainted for some hours with the actions of a youth of whose very name I am ignorant, but whose face I am very certain will reappear twenty years hence in a setting of glory, recognized as yet one other of those superb spirits who will do all for England.
The occasion was a pageant—no matter what pageant—a great public pageant which passed through the Strand, and was to be witnessed by hundreds of thousands. Let us call it "The Function."
Well, I was walking down the Strand three days before this Function was to take place, when I saw in an empty shop window about twenty-five wooden chairs, arranged in tiers one above the other upon a sloping platform, and lettered from A to Y. In the window was a large notice, very clearly printed, and it was to this effect:
WHY PAY FANCY PRICES WHICH MUST INEVITABLY FALL BEFORE THE FUNCTION? SEATS IN THIS WINDOW, COMMANDING A FULL VIEW OF THE PROCESSION, 5S.
At a little desk in the gangway by which the chairs were approached sat a dark, pale child—I can call him by no other name, so frail and young did he seem—and the delicacy of his complexion led me to wonder perhaps whether he was not one of those whom the climate of England strikes with consumption, and who, in the mysterious providence of our race, wander abroad in search of health and find a Realm. His alertness, however, and the brilliance of his eye; his winning, almost obsequious address, and the hooked clutch of his gestures betrayed an energy that no physical weakness could conquer. He invited me to enter, and begged me to purchase a seat.
I had no need of one, for I had made arrangements to spend the Great
Day itself and the next at a small hotel in the extreme north of
Sutherlandshire, but I was arrested by the evident mental power of my new
acquaintance, and I wasted five shillings in buying the chair marked D.
It was with some difficulty that I could purchase it, so eager was he that I should have the best place; "seeing," said he, "that they are all one price, and that you may as well benefit by being an early bird." I noted the strict rectitude which, for all that men ignorant of modern commerce may say, is at the basis of commercial success.
Something so attracted me in the whole business that I was weak enough to take a chair in a tea-shop opposite and watch all day the actions of the Child of Fate.
In less than an hour twenty different people, mainly gentlefolk, had come in and bought places at the sensible price at which he offered them. To each of them he gave a ticket corresponding to the number of the chair. He was courteous to all, and even expansive. He explained the advantage of each particular seat.
So far so good; but, what was more astonishing, in the second hour another twenty came and appeared to purchase; in the third (which was the busiest time of the day) some forty, first and last, must have done business with the Favourite of Fortune. I pondered upon these things very deeply, and went home.