As I was getting out of a ’bus the conductor said to me in a confidential tone:

“I say, what does that mean? ‘Sack of Khartoum’? What does ‘Sack of Khartoum’ mean?”

“It means,” said I, “that they’ve taken Khartoum and played hell with it all round.”

He understood that and thanked me, whereon we parted.

Missolonghi

Ballard

“Why, me dear,” she exclaimed, “when I was your age I could never hear the name mentioned without bursting into tears.”

I should perhaps add that Byron died there.

Memnon

I saw the driver of the Hampstead ’bus once, near St. Giles’s Church—an old, fat, red-faced man sitting bolt upright on the top of his ’bus in a driving storm of snow, fast asleep with a huge waterproof over his great-coat which descended with sweeping lines on to a tarpaulin. All this rose out of a cloud of steam from the horses. He had a short clay pipe in his mouth but, for the moment, he looked just like Memnon.