[INTRODUCTION]
[CONTENTS]
[LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS]
[FOOTNOTES]
INTRODUCTION
By JEROME K. JEROME
'PLEASE, sir,' he said, 'could you tell me the right time?'
'Twenty minutes to eight,' I replied, looking at my watch.
'Oh,' he remarked. Then added for my information after a pause: 'I haven't got to be in till half-past eight.'
After that we fell back into our former silence, and sat watching the murky twilight, he at his end of the park seat, I at mine.
'And do you live far away?' I asked, lest, he having miscalculated, the short legs might be hard put to it.
'Oh no, only over there,' he answered, indicating with a sweep of his arm the northern half of London where it lay darkening behind the chimney-fringed horizon; 'I often come and sit here.'
It seemed an odd pastime for so very small a citizen. 'And what makes you like to come and sit here?' I said.