galleries were really open to the people, who thronged them, drinking in
knowledge. He noted the children playing in the parks, and they were
better dressed, the parks themselves better kept. You can judge a nation
by the state of its children's boots, and these had fewer holes. The poor
London had, and ever would have, but she was not the callous mother of
other years. She felt for those who were down.

Sir George would ride by 'bus, except, indeed, when in pursuit of some
volume for that beloved library at Auckland. Then, nothing would satisfy
his eagerness but hot foot and back with the trophy, scanning its pages
in his scholar's joy. But a-top the 'bus was the working man, homeward
bound, and he was getting more out of life. Manhood was in him, he
evidently had at last a free, firm seat in the saddle of which Providence
had always held the stirrup.

The feeling of human brotherhood was wider, deeper, the benefits
springing therefrom apparent all round. Penny fares were bringing classes
into contact with each other, who were formerly as far divided as if they
had lived in different planets. The London policeman's upheld hand, was
an eloquent speech on the sacred meaning of law to a free people. Youth
helped age to a seat in a public vehicle, and the bricklayer quenched the
fire of his pipe because the smoke annoyed a lady sitting behind him.

Sir George would have built a bricklayer's statue on the best site that
London could provide. Not that he was fond of statues, unless they
happened likewise to be art; but that such a one would have carried its
meaning. There was already a statue of himself at Cape Town, and his
Auckland admirers had a scheme for another.

'No doubt they'll take care it does you justice,' he was joked.