THE POWER OF SENTIMENT.
LITTLE BITS OF LONDON.
Bond Street.
I find it very difficult to walk slowly down Bond Street as one ought to do; I always feel so guilty. Most of the people there look scornfully at me as if I belonged to Whitechapel, and the rest look suspiciously at me as if I belonged to Bond Street. My clothes are neither good enough nor bad enough. So I hurry through with the tense expression of a man who is merely using Bond Street as a thoroughfare, because it is the way to his dentist—as indeed in my case it is. But recently I did saunter in the proper way, and I took a most thrilling inventory of the principal classes of shops, the results of which have now been tabulated by my statistical department.
For instance, do you know how many shops in the street sell things for ladies to wear (not including boots, jewellery or shoes)? No? Well, there are thirty-three. Not many, is it? But then there are twenty-one jewellers (including pearl shops) and eight boot and/or shoe shops; so that, with two sort of linen places, which may fairly be reckoned as female, the ladies' total is sixty-four. I only counted a hundred-and-fifty shops altogether. Of that total, nine are places where men can buy things to wear, and ten are places where they can buy things to smoke; I have charitably debited all the cigarette-shops to the men, even the ones where the cigarettes are tipped with rose-leaves and violet-petals. But even if I do that and give the men the two places where you can buy guns and throw in the one garden-seat shop, we are left with the result:—
| Feminine Shops. | Masculine Shops. | ||
| Dress | 33 | Dress | 9 |
| Jewellers | 21 | Tobacco | 10 |
| Boots and Shoes | 8 | Motors | 9 |
| Sort of Linen Places | 2 | Guns | 2 |
| Dog Bureau | 1 | Garden Seats | 1 |
| — | — | ||
| 65 | 31 | ||