way of dealing with it, you are not beginning yet to pave your way
to success in the arts.

Well, I have spoken of a huge nuisance, which is a type of the worst
nuisances of what an ill-tempered man might be excused for calling
the Century of Nuisances, rather than the Century of Commerce. I
will now leave it to the consciences of the rich and influential
among us, and speak of a minor nuisance which it is in the power of
every one of us to abate, and which, small as it is, is so
vexatious, that if I can prevail on a score of you to take heed to
it by what I am saying, I shall think my evening's work a good one.
Sandwich-papers I mean--of course you laugh: but come now, don't
you, civilised as you are in Birmingham, leave them all about the
Lickey hills and your public gardens and the like? If you don't I
really scarcely know with what words to praise you. When we
Londoners go to enjoy ourselves at Hampton Court, for instance, we
take special good care to let everybody know that we have had
something to eat: so that the park just outside the gates (and a
beautiful place it is) looks as if it had been snowing dirty paper.
I really think you might promise me one and all who are here present
to have done with this sluttish habit, which is the type of many
another in its way, just as the smoke nuisance is. I mean such
things as scrawling one's name on monuments, tearing down tree
boughs, and the like.

I suppose 'tis early days in the revival of the arts to express
one's disgust at the daily increasing hideousness of the posters
with which all our towns are daubed. Still we ought to be disgusted
at such horrors, and I think make up our minds never to buy any of
the articles so advertised. I can't believe they can be worth much