Yet I believe, in your impulsive way,
You think we're bosom friends from childhood's day.
Yes, though they brand our English ways as cold,
Meetings like ours make glad the whole huge city.
The magnate, weighty as though shod with gold,
The lawyer's clerk, precocious, slim and writty,
All have the same convulsive warmth of greeting
For casual people whom they're always meeting.
Is it perchance self-preservation's law
That drives good will, drowning in Mammon's sea,