Concerning a Certain Lady - Page 2

an unmannerly newsboy and an unmannerly porter on the
platform. I waited until the porter was out of the way, and then I hit
the newsboy for laughing at me, but even with that altercation it was a
tedious wait for the next train to Wimbledon.

This is the latest of my encounters with this lady, but it has decided
me to keep silence no longer. She has been persecuting me now for years
in all parts of London. It may be I am her only victim, but, on the
other hand, she may be in the habit of annoying the entire class of
slender and inoffensive young men. If so, and they will communicate with
me through the publishers of this little volume, we might do something
towards suppressing her, found an Anti-Energetic-Lady-League, or
something of that sort. For if there was ever a crying wrong that
clamoured for suppression it is this violent woman.

She is, even now, flagrantly illegal. She might be given in charge for
hitting people at any time, and be warned, or fined, or given a week.
But somehow it is only when she is overpast and I am recovering my wits
that I recollect that she might be dealt with in this way. She is the
chartered libertine of British matrons, and assaulteth where she
listeth. The blows I have endured from her? She fights people who are
getting into 'buses. It is no mere accidental jostling, but a deliberate
shouldering, poking with umbrellas, and clawing. It is her delight to go
to the Regent Circus corner of Piccadilly, about half-past seven in the
evening, accompanied by a genteel rout of daughters, and fill up whole
omnibuses with them. At that hour there are work-girls and tired clerks,
and the like worn-out anæmic humanity trying to get home for an hour or
so of rest before bed, and they crowd round the 'buses very eagerly.
They are little able to cope with her exuberant vitality, being
ill-nourished and tired from the day's work, and she simply mows through
them and fills up every vacant place they covet before their eyes. Then,
I can never count change even when my mind is tranquil, and she knows
that, and swoops threateningly upon me in booking offices and
stationers' shops. When I am dodging cabs at crossings she will appear
from behind an omnibus or carriage and butt into me furiously. She holds
her umbrella in her folded arms just as the Punch puppet does his staff,
and with as deadly effect. Sometimes she discards her customary navy
blue and puts on a glittering bonnet with bead trimmings, and goes and
hurts people who are waiting to enter the pit at theatres, and
especially to hurt me. She is fond of public shows, because they afford
such possibilities of hurting me. Once I saw her standing partly on a
seat and partly on another lady in the church of St. George's, Hanover