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Cognitive Big Data Intelligence with a
Metaheuristic Approach
This page intentionally left blank
Cognitive Data Science in Sustainable
Computing

Cognitive Big Data

Intelligence with a
Metaheuristic
Approach
Series Editor
Arun Kumar Sangaiah

Volume Editors
Sushruta Mishra
School of Computer Engineering, Kalinga Institute of Industrial technology
(KIIT) University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

Hrudaya Kumar Tripathy

School of Computer Engineering, Kalinga Institute of Industrial technology
(KIIT) University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

Pradeep Kumar Mallick

School of Computer Engineering, Kalinga Institute of Industrial technology
(KIIT) University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

Arun Kumar Sangaiah

School of Computer Science, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA,
Australia

Gyoo-Soo Chae
Division of ICT, Baekseok University, Cheonan, South Korea
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Contents

Contributors xiii
Preface xv

1. A discourse on metaheuristics techniques for solving

clustering and semisupervised learning models 1
Nishant Kashyap and Anjana Mishra
1. Introduction 1
2. Overview of clustering 2
2.1 K-means clustering 2
2.2 Hierarchical clustering 2
2.3 Fuzzy C-means 2
2.4 Model-based clustering 4
2.5 Particle swarm optimization 4
2.6 Clustering using PSO 6
2.7 Ant colony optimization 7
2.8 Clustering using ACO 9
2.9 Genetic algorithm 10
2.10 Differential evolution 13
2.11 Clustering using differential evolution 14
2.12 Semisupervised learning algorithms 15
2.13 PSO-assisted semisupervised clustering 15
2.14 Semisupervised clustering using GA 17
3. Conclusion 18
References 18

2. Metaheuristics in classification, clustering, and

frequent pattern mining 21
Hiren Kumar Thakkar, Hrushikesh Shukla and
Prasan Kumar Sahoo
1. Introduction 21
1.1 Introduction to metaheuristics 21
1.2 Classification of metaheuristic techniques 22
1.3 Working of some metaheuristic algorithms 24

v
vi Contents

2. Metaheuristics in classification 29
2.1 Use of ant colony optimization in classification 30
2.2 Use of genetic algorithms in classification 33
2.3 Use of particle swarm optimization in classification 37
3. Metaheuristics in clustering 40
3.1 Use of ant colony optimization in clustering 41
3.2 Use of genetic algorithms in clustering 45
3.3 Use of particle swarm optimization in clustering 49
4. Metaheuristics in frequent pattern mining 54
4.1 Use of ant colony optimization in frequent pattern mining 54
4.2 Use of genetic algorithms in frequent pattern mining 58
4.3 Use of particle swarm optimization in frequent
pattern mining 61
5. Conclusion 67
References 67

3. Impacts of metaheuristic and swarm intelligence

approach in optimization 71
Abhishek Banerjee, Dharmpal Singh, Sudipta Sahana and
Ira Nath
1. Introduction 71
1.1 Introduction of metaheuristic 71
1.2 Introduction of swarm intelligence 73
2. Concepts of Metaheuristic 73
2.1 Optimization problems 73
2.2 Classification of metaheuristic techniques 74
2.3 A generic metaheuristic framework 76
3. Metaheuristic techniques 76
3.1 Simulated annealing 77
3.2 Genetic algorithms 77
3.3 Ant colony optimization 78
3.4 Bee Algorithms 78
3.5 Particle swarm optimization 78
3.6 Harmony search 79
3.7 Tabu search 79
4. Swarm intelligence techniques 80
4.1 Bat Algorithm 80
4.2 Firefly algorithm 82
4.3 Lion Optimization Algorithm 85
4.4 Chicken swarm optimization algorithm 85
4.5 Social Spider Algorithm 86
4.6 Spider monkey optimization algorithm 88
4.7 African buffalo optimization algorithm 90
4.8 Flower pollination algorithm 91
 Contents vii

5. Impacts of metaheuristic and swarm intelligence approach in

optimization 94
5.1 Implication of the metaheuristic techniques in
optimization 94
5.2 Implication of the swarm intelligence techniques in
optimization 94
6. Conclusion 94
References 95
Further reading 99

4. A perspective depiction of heuristics in virtual reality 101

Moushita Patnaik and Angelia Melani Adrian
1. Introduction to virtual reality 101
2. Heuristics in brief 102
3. Virtual realityeenabled case studies 104
3.1 Virtual reality in crime scene evaluation 104
3.2 Virtual reality in assessing a chess game 107
3.3 Virtual reality in client assignment problem 110
3.4 Client assignment algorithms 111
4. Performance evaluation and discussion 113
5. Conclusion 115
References 115

5. A heuristic approach of web users decision-making

using deep learning models 117
Vaisnav Roy and Ankit Desai
1. Introduction 117
2. Analysis of user online behavior using deep learning models 120
2.1 Classic neural networks 120
2.2 Convolutional Neural Networks 121
2.3 Recurrent neural networks 122
2.4 Self-organizing maps 122
2.5 Boltzmann machines 123
2.6 Deep reinforcement learning 123
3. Greedy algorithm as the heuristic 123
4. Background study 124
5. Description of the dataset 125
6. Implementation and discussion 126
7. Conclusion 128
References 128
viii Contents

6. Inertia weight strategies for task allocation using

metaheuristic algorithm 131
Arabinda Pradhan and Sukant Kishoro Bisoy
1. Introduction 131
2. Related work 133
3. Standard PSO 136
4. Model of task allocation in VM 137
5. Inertia weight strategy 137
6. Performance evaluation 140
6.1 Experiment setup 140
6.2 Result and analysis 141
7. Conclusion and future work 144
References 144

7. Big data classification with IoT-based application

for e-health care 147
Saumendra Kumar Mohapatra and Mihir Narayan Mohanty
1. Introduction 147
2. State of the art 151
3. Big data in health care 153
3.1 Biomedical data mining 155
4. Classification techniques 156
5. IoT-based smart biomedical data acquisition and processing
system 160
5.1 IoT-based data communication framework 161
6. Multiagent system for biomedical data processing 162
7. Detection of cardiac abnormalities 165
7.1 Classification algorithm 165
8. Results and discussion 167
9. Conclusion 169
References 169

8. Study of bio-inspired neural networks for the

prediction of liquid flow in a process control system 173
Pijush Dutta, Korhan Cengiz and Asok Kumar
1. Introduction 173
2. Related work 176
3. Experimental setup 177
4. Preliminary details of the algorithm 177
4.1 Preliminary details of the neural network (NN) 177
4.2 Preliminaries of the firefly algorithm 179
4.3 Preliminaries of particle swarm optimization (PSO) 180
5. Proposed model 180
5.1 Modeling of the flow rate using a neural network 180
 Contents ix

6. Results and discussion 182

6.1 Computational efficiency test 183
6.2 Convergence test 183
6.3 Accuracy test 184
7. Conclusions and future work 187
References 188

9. Affordable energy-intensive routing using

metaheuristics 193
Priyom Dutta and B.S. Mahanand
1. Introduction 193
2. Literature survey 193
3. Problem description 195
4. Routing 196
4.1 Routers 196
4.2 Router paths 197
4.3 Router transmission 197
5. Routing algorithms 198
6. Routing table 199
7. Metaheuristics 199
7.1 Constructive metaheuristics 200
7.2 Population-based metaheuristics 201
7.3 Hybrid metaheuristics 201
8. Metaheuristics for efficient routing 201
9. Proposed solution using metaheuristics 202
9.1 Probability estimation of congestion 203
9.2 Memetic algorithms 204
10. Conclusion 207
References 208

10. Semantic segmentation for self-driving cars using

deep learning: a survey 211
Qusay Sellat, Sukant Kishoro Bisoy and Rojanlina Priyadarshini
1. Introduction 211
2. Semantic segmentation for autonomous driving 212
2.1 Autonomous driving 212
2.2 Semantic segmentation 213
3. Deep learning 215
3.1 Machine learning 215
3.2 Artificial neural networks 216
3.3 Deep learning 218
3.4 Learning process of deep neural networks 219
3.5 Challenges 224
3.6 Convolutional neural networks 226
3.7 Autoencoders 229
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x Contents

4. Related work 230

5. Experimental results 233
6. Conclusion 236
References 236

11. Cognitive big data analysis for E-health and

telemedicine using metaheuristic algorithms 239
Deepak Rai and Hiren Kumar Thakkar
1. Introduction 239
1.1 Why E-health care? 240
1.2 Advantages of E-health care 242
2. Cognitive computing technologies for E-health care 243
3. Cognitive big data analytics for E-health care 243
3.1 Role of Hadoop and Apache Spark in E-health
care analytics 245
4. Need for cognitive big data analytics in E-health care 247
5. Advantages of cognitive big data analytics in E-health care 247
6. Challenges of cognitive big data analytics in E-health care 249
7. Metaheuristic approach for optimization of cognitive big
data healthcare 250
7.1 Benefits of metaheuristic approach over classical
optimization methods 250
7.2 Applications of metaheuristics in cognitive big
dataebased healthcare 251
8. Cognitive big data analytics use cases in E-health care 251
9. Future of cognitive big data analytics in E-health care 253
10. Market analysis of cognitive big data analytics in
E-health care 254
11. Cognitive big data players in E-health care 254
References 257

12. Multicriteria recommender system using different

approaches 259
Chandramouli Das, Abhaya Kumar Sahoo and
Chittaranjan Pradhan
1. Introduction 259
2. Related work 260
3. Working principle 262
3.1 Modeling phase 264
3.2 Prediction phase 264
3.3 Recommendation phase 264
3.4 Content-based approach 264
3.5 Collaborative filtering approach 265
3.6 Knowledge-based filtering approach 266
 Contents xi

4. Proposed approaches 266

4.1 K-nearest neighbor (KNN) 267
4.2 Support vector machine (SVM) 268
4.3 Artificial neural networks (ANNs) 270
5. Experimental data analysis 272
5.1 Data set 272
5.2 Confusion matrix 274
5.3 Recall value 274
5.4 Precision value 274
5.5 F1 score 275
5.6 Accuracy 275
6. Result 275
7. Conclusion 276
References 276

13. Optimization-based energy-efficient routing scheme

for wireless body area network 279
Aradhana Behura and Manas Ranjan Kabat
1. Introduction 279
1.1 Three-tier wireless body area network (WBAN)
architecture 280
1.2 Motivation and application scenario 283
2. Related work 285
3. Case study on an energy-efficient hybrid C-means
donkey-smuggler optimization-based routing technique for
a wireless sensor network 290
4. Analysis of the previous approach 291
4.1 Network configuration 291
4.2 Protocol approach 292
5. Conclusion 301
References 302

14. Livestock health monitoring using a smart

IoT-enabled neural network recognition system 305
Ricky Mohanty and Subhendu Kumar Pani
1. Introduction 305
2. System architecture 307
2.1 Monitoring and controlling system 307
2.2 Central monitoring unit 307
2.3 Functions of the central monitoring unit 307
2.4 Local monitoring unit 308
2.5 Functions of the local monitoring unit 309
2.6 Basic hardware requirements 309
2.7 Wearable device platform 310
2.8 Algorithm 311
2.9 Data collection and transmission 313
xii Contents

3. Recognition of a diseased bird by the central monitoring

unit using Raspberry Pi 313
4. Results and discussion 318
5. Conclusion 320
References 320

15. Preserving healthcare data: from traditional

encryption to cognitive deep learning perspective 323
Priyanka Ray and Sushruta Mishra
1. Introduction 323
2. Related works 331
2.1 PKE-based systems 331
2.2 SKE-based systems 332
2.3 ABE-based systems 333
2.4 Cognitive HE-based systems 334
3. Encryption algorithms 334
4. Performance evaluation 338
5. Future challenges of cognitive encryption models in
healthcare 340
6. Conclusion 341
References 342

Index 347
Contributors

Angelia Melani Adrian, Informatics Engineering Department, De La Salle Catholic

University, Manado City, Indonesia
Abhishek Banerjee, Pailan College of Management and Technology, Pailan, Joka,
Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Aradhana Behura, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Veer Surendra
Sai University of Technology, Burla, Odisha, India
Sukant Kishoro Bisoy, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, C.V.
Raman Global University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
Korhan Cengiz, Department of Telecommunication, Trakya University, Edirne, Turkey
Chandramouli Das, School of Computer Engineering, KIIT Deemed to be University,
Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
Ankit Desai, Embibe, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Pijush Dutta, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Global
Institute of Management and Technology, Krishnagar, West Bengal, India
Priyom Dutta, School of Computer Engineering, KIIT University, Bhubaneswar,
Odisha, India
Manas Ranjan Kabat, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Veer
Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla, Odisha, India
Nishant Kashyap, C.V. Raman Global University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
Asok Kumar, Dean of Student Welfare Department, Vidyasagar University, Medinipur,
West Bengal, India
B.S. Mahanand, Department of Information Science and Engineering, Sri Jayacha-
marajendra College of Engineering, JSS Science and Technology University,
Mysuru, Karnataka, India
Anjana Mishra, C.V. Raman Global University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
Sushruta Mishra, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology Deemed to be University,
Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
Ricky Mohanty, Department of Electronics & Telecommunication, Orissa Engineering
College, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
Mihir Narayan Mohanty, ITER, Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (Deemed to be University),
Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
Saumendra Kumar Mohapatra, ITER, Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (Deemed to be
University), Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

xiii
xiv Contributors

Ira Nath, JIS College of Engineering, Kalyani, West Bengal, India

Subhendu Kumar Pani, Krupajal Computer Academy, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
Moushita Patnaik, School of Computer Engineering, KIIT University, Bhubaneswar,
Odisha, India
Arabinda Pradhan, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, C.V. Raman
Global University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
Chittaranjan Pradhan, School of Computer Engineering, KIIT Deemed to be
University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
Rojanlina Priyadarshini, Department of Computer Science and Information Tech-
nology, C.V. Raman Global University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
Deepak Rai, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Institute of
Technology, Patna, Bihar, India
Priyanka Ray, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology Deemed to be University,
Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
Vaisnav Roy, School of Computer Engineering, KIIT University, Bhubaneswar,
Odisha, India
Sudipta Sahana, JIS College of Engineering, Kalyani, West Bengal, India
Abhaya Kumar Sahoo, School of Computer Engineering, KIIT Deemed to be
University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
Prasan Kumar Sahoo, Department of Computer Science and Information Engineer-
ing, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan City, Taiwan
Qusay Sellat, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, C.V. Raman Global
University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
Hrushikesh Shukla, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Dr. Vishwanath
Karad MIT World Peace University, Pune, Maharashtra, India
Dharmpal Singh, JIS College of Engineering, Kalyani, West Bengal, India
Hiren Kumar Thakkar, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, School of
Engineering and Sciences, SRM University, Mangalagiri, Andhra Pradesh, India
Preface

In recent times, information industry has experienced rapid changes in both

the platform scale and scope of applications. Computers, smartphones, clouds,
social networks, and supercomputers demand not only high performance but also
a high degree of machine intelligence. At present, Big data is playing a signif-
icant role in the field of information technology and, more specifically, in the
Data Science domain. Many solutions are being offered in addressing big data
analytics. Analysis of data by humans can be a time-consuming activity, and
thus, the use of sophisticated cognitive systems can be utilized to crunch this
enormous amount of data. Cognitive computing can be utilized to reduce the
shortcomings of the concerns faced during big data analytics. Thus, we are
entering an era of big data and cognitive computing. To meet these new
computing and communication changes, we must upgrade the clouds and the
computing ecosystem with new capabilities, such as machine learning, IoT
sensing, data analytics, and cognitive machines mimicking human intelligence.
Metaheuristic algorithms have proven to be effective, robust, and efficient in
solving real-world optimization, clustering, forecasting, classification, and other
engineering problems. The ability of metaheuristics algorithms includes man-
aging a set of solutions, attending multiple objectives, as well as their ability
to optimize various values, which allows them to fit in dealing with big data
analytics. Metaheuristic algorithms have become powerful and famous in
computational intelligence and many applications. This volume intends to
project different frameworks and applications of cognitive big data analytics
using the metaheuristics approach.
This book is designed as a self-contained edition so that readers can under-
stand different aspects of recent innovations of metaheuristics to knowledge
discovery problems in the context of Big Data and Cognitive computing. As
many as 15 chapters are made as part of this book. Different application domains
related to the scope of this book are discussed which include metaheuristics in
clustering and classification, swarm intelligence, heuristics in virtual reality,
deep learning, and big data with IoT and recommendation system among others.

xv
This page intentionally left blank
Chapter 1

A discourse on metaheuristics
techniques for solving
clustering and semisupervised
learning models
Nishant Kashyap, Anjana Mishra
C.V. Raman Global University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

1. Introduction
A rapid surge of machine learning algorithms have been seen in the last decade
which has also pointed out the need for state-of-the art optimization techniques
to deal with the large amount of data involved. Metaheuristics involving data-
driven methods have shown their effectiveness in better quality of solutions
and better convergence rate.
Metaheuristics methods explore the solution space to find globally opti-
mum solution and improve upon the general searching procedure provided by
the heuristic methods. They guide a basic and simple heuristic method by
inculcating various concepts to exploit the search space of the given problem
[1]. Metaheuristics techniques are generally nondeterministic and approximate
but give good enough solution in reasonable time. Besides, these methods are
particularly well suited to solving nonconvex optimization problems including
the likes of those encountered during clustering. A wide range of meta-
heuristics have been discovered ranging from search-based methods like
simulated annealing and tabu search to the popular nature inspired and the
evolutionary algorithms. A brief discussion on the widely used metaheuristics
is discussed in our study.
Clustering and semisupervised methods are a hot topic today, finding its
uses in multiple important fields ranging from big data, wireless sensor net-
works to bioinformatics to name a few [2]. As such, it has become one of the
most sought after areas in research to improve the performance of the existing
methods involved. Most of the algorithms used for clustering and classification
suffer from drawbacks related to being trapped in the local maxima or minima.

Cognitive Big Data Intelligence with a Metaheuristic Approach

https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-85117-6.00012-1
Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1
2 Cognitive Big Data Intelligence with a Metaheuristic Approach

Due to this, we use various nature-inspired metaheuristic techniques to find

globally optimal solutions in reasonable amount of computation time.
Before starting out with the metaheuristics, we start out with an overview
of the standard methods for clustering.

2. Overview of clustering
2.1 K-means clustering
Clustering using k-means basically culminates to assigning the data vectors,
Zp accurately to k clusters.
" Basically, the aim is to minimize
# the sum of the
Pk P  
squared errors, i.e., Wp  ki 2 by repeating the
j¼1 for all Wp ε cluster ki
following steps for some number of iteration (or till some termination con-
dition is reached):
1. Randomly initialize the cluster centroids. Then, for each data vector Zp,
assign it the cluster with centroids ki(i ¼ 1,2,3, .,k) such that ||Zp e ki|| is
minimum (here, ||x|| represents the Euclidean norm of x)
2. For each cluster, find a the  new cluster centroid, Ki such that
P Wp  (where |ki| is the number of data vectors in
Ki ¼ jk1i j
for all Wp ε cluster ki
cluster ki)

2.2 Hierarchical clustering

In hierarchical clustering, the required number of clusters is formed in a
hierarchical manner. For some n number of data points, initially we assign
each data point to n clusters, i.e., each point in a cluster in itself. Thereafter, we
merge two points with the least distance between them into a single cluster.
The distance of the other points from this cluster made of two points is the
least distance from either of the two points from the other points. This process
is continued until we get the required number of clusters (Fig. 1.1).

2.3 Fuzzy C-means

This is used when the data points are fuzzy, i.e., they can belong to two or
more clusters at the same time. Each data point (there being n data points)
belongs to some cluster with some weight (Fig. 1.2).
Gij where Gij denotes belongingness (weight) the ith data point to the jth
cluster cj (with centroids kj). It is important to note that all weights of a data
point add up to 1 as shown in Ref. [3]. In fuzzy c-means, the squared error
function that we want to minimize is Eq. (1.1)
 A discourse on metaheuristics techniques Chapter | 1 3

FIGURE 1.1 Hierarchical clustering, closest points clustered first.

FIGURE 1.2 Clustering on fuzzy sets.

" #
X
k X
n  2
F¼ Gd Zp  kj 
ij (1.1)
j¼1 p¼1

Here, d is some value from 1 to infinity which is used to control the weights.
At first all the values of the weights are initialized. Thereafter, the
following steps are repeated till some termination condition:
I. Calculate the cluster centroids.
II. Update the weights.
The cluster centroids are updated as follows:
!, !
X n Xn
kj ¼ Gdij Zi Gdij (1.2)
i¼1 i¼1

And the weights are updated as follows:

0 1
  !2=ðd1Þ
B X
k  Z  kj  C
Wij ¼ @1=  p  A (1.3)
Zp  kp 
p¼1
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observance of a strict code is the price of peace. In that voluntary
mutual captivity, so full of enforced, familiar contacts, the error of a
moment might produce a thousand hours of purgatory.... A fresh
young girl comes swinging in, and with a gesture of which in a few
years she will be incapable, caresses the chin of her desiccated
mamma. And the contrast between the two figures, the thought of
what lies behind the one and what lies before the other, inured so
soon to this existence—is poignant. The girl perceptibly droops in
that atmosphere; flourish in it she cannot. And the smiles and the
sweetness continue in profusion. Nevertheless I feel that I am amid
loose nitro-glycerine: one jar, and the whole affair might be blown to
atoms, and the papers would be full of “mysterious fatal explosion in
a pension at Florence.” The danger-points are the jampots and the
honey-pots and the marmalade-pots, of which each lady apparently
has her own. And when one of them says to the maid (all in white at
this hour, as is meet): “This is not my jam—I had more,” I quake at
the conception of the superhuman force which restrains the awful
bitterness in her voice. A matter of an instant; but in that instant, in
that fraction of an instant, the tigress has snarled at the bars of the
cage and been dragged back. It is marvellous. It is terrifying.
We talk. We talk to prove our virtuosity in the nice conduct of the
early meal. I learn that they have been here for months, and that
they will be here for months. And that next year it may be Rome, or
more possibly Florence again. Florence is inexhaustible,
inexhaustible.
I mention the opera. I assert that there is such a thing as an
opera.
“Really!” Politeness masking indifference.
I say that I went to the opera last night.
“Really!” Politeness masking a puzzled, an even slightly alarmed
surprise.
I say that the opera was most diverting.
“Really!” Politeness masking boredom.
The opera is not appraised in the guide-books. The opera is no
part of the official museum. Florence is a museum, and nothing but
a museum. Beyond the museum they do not admit that anything
exists; hence nothing exists beyond it. They do not scorn the rest of
Florence. The rest of Florence simply has not occurred to them.
Pride of the Medicis, bow before this pride, sublime in its absolute
unconsciousness!

That morning I made my way in the rain to the Strozzi Palace,

which palace is for me the great characteristic building of Florence.
When I think of Florence, I do not expire in ecstasy on the syllables
of Duomo, Baptistery, or Palazzo Vecchio, or even Bargello. The
Strozzi Palace is in my mind. Possibly I merely prefer it to the
Riccardi Palace because I cannot by paying fivepence invade it and
add it up. The Strozzi Palace still holds out against the northern
hordes. Filippo Strozzi, as to whom my ignorance is immaculate,
must have united in a remarkable degree the qualities of savagery,
austere arrogance, and fine taste; otherwise he would never have
approved Maiano’s plans for this residence and castle. The
dimensions of it remind you of the Comédie Humaine, and it carries
rectangularity and uncompromising sharpness of corners to the last
limit. In form it is simply a colossal cube, of which you can only
appreciate the height by standing immediately beneath the
unfinished roof-cornice, the latter so vast in its beautiful enlargement
of a Roman model that nobody during five hundred years has had
the pluck to set about and finish it. Then you can see that in size the
Strozzi ranks with cathedrals, and that the residential part of it, up in
the air, only begins where three-story houses end.
To appreciate its beauty and its moral you must get away from it,
opposite one of its corners, so as to have two façades in perspective.
The small arched windows of the first and second storeys are all that
it shows of a curve. Rather finicking these windows, the elegant
trifling of a spirit essentially grim; some are bricked up, some show a
gleam of white-painted interior woodwork, and others have the old
iron-studded shutters. The lower windows are monstrously netted in
iron to resist the human storm. The upper windows may each be ten
feet high, but they are mere details of the façades, and the lower
windows might be square port-holes. See the two perspectives
sloping away from you under the tremendous eaves, a state-
entrance in the middle of each! See the three rows of torch or
banner holders and the marvellous iron lanterns at the corners!
Imagine the place lit up with flame on some night of the early
sixteenth century, human beings swarming about its base as at the
foot of precipices. Imagine the lights out, and the dawn, and the
day-gloom of those ill-lighted and splendid apartments. Imagine the
traditional enemies of the Medicis trying to keep themselves warm
therein during a windy Florentine winter! Imagine, from the Strozzi
Palace, the ferocious altercations, and the artistic connoisseurship,
and the continuous ruthless sweating of the common people, which
made up the lives of the masters of Florence—and you will formulate
a better idea of what life was than from any church! This palace is a
supreme monument of grim force tempered by an exquisite sense of
beauty. With the exception of an intervening cornice which has had
a piece knocked out of it, and the damaged plinth, it stands now as
it did at the commencement. Time has not accepted the challenge of
its sharp corners. It might have been constructed ten years ago by
Foster and Dicksee.
I go up to one of the state entrances and peep in, shamefacedly.
For it is a private house. At the far end of the archway is a
magnificent iron grille, and I can see a delicately arched courtyard,
utterly different in style from the exterior, fruit of another brain; and
beyond the courtyard, a glimpse of a fresco and the vista of the
state entrance in the opposite façade. At each corner of the
courtyard the rain is splashing down, evidently from high open
spouts, splashing with a loud, careless, insolent noise, and the
middle of the courtyard is a pool continuously pricked by thousands
of raindrops. The glass of the large lamp swinging in the draught of
the archway is broken. A huge lackey in uniform strolls in front of
the grille and lolls there. I move instinctively away, for if anybody
recoils before a lackey it is your socialist.
Then I see a lady hurrying across the square enveloped in a great
cloak and sheltered beneath an umbrella. She makes straight for the
state entrance, and passes me, dripping up the archway. I say to
myself:
“She belongs to the house. Now I am going to see the gates yield.
The lackey was expecting her.” And I had quite a thrill at sight of this
living inhabitant of the Strozzi Palace.
But not She went right up to the grille, as though the lackey was
in prison and she visiting him, and stopped there and stared silently
into the courtyard. The lackey, dumbfounded and craven, moved off.
She had only come to look. This was her manner of coming to look.
I ought to have divined by the solidity of her heels that she was one
of ours; not one of my particular band at breakfast, but in Florence
there are dozens upon dozens of such breakfasts every morning,
and from some Anglican breakfast she had risen.

Our breakfast took place in a palace. Not the Strozzi, not nearly so
large nor so fine as the Strozzi, but a real Florentine palazzo. It has
been transformed within to suit the needs and the caprices of those
stern ladies. They have come, and they have come again, and they
have calmly insisted, and they have had their will. Hygienic
appliances authentically signed by the great English artists in this
genre! Radiators in each room! Electric bulbs over the bed and in the
ceiling! Iron beds! The inconvenient height of the windows from the
floor lessened by a little wooden platform on which are a little chair
and a little table and a little piece of needlework and a little vase of
flowers!... Steadily they are occupying the palaces, each lady in her
nook, and the slow force of their will moulds even the granite to the
desired uses.
 Why do they come? It cannot be out of passion for the great art
of the world. Nobody who had a glimmering of the real sense of
beauty could dress as they dress, move as they move, buy what
they buy, or talk as they talk. They mingle in their heads Goltermann
with Debussy, and Botticelli with Maude Goodman. Their drawing-
room is full of Maude Goodman in her rich first period.. .. It cannot
be out of a love of history, for they never unseal their lips in a spot
where history has been made without demonstrating in the most
painful manner an entire lack of historical imagination. They nibble
daintily at crumbs of art and of archæology in special booklets which
some of themselves have written and others of themselves have
illustrated, and which make the coarse male turn with an almost
animal satisfaction to Carl Baedeker or even the Reverend Herbert H.
Jeaffreson, M. A. It is impossible that these excellent creatures,
whose only real defect has to do with the hooks and eyes down their
spines, can ever comprehend the beauty and the significance of that
by which they are surrounded. They have not the temperament.
Temperamentally, they would be much more at home in Riga. Also it
is impossible to believe that they are happy in Florence. They do not
wear the look of joy. Their gestures are not those of happiness.
Nevertheless they can only be in Florence because they have
discovered that they are less unhappy here than at home. What
deep malady of society is it that drives them out of their natural
frame—the frame in which they are comely and even delectable, the
frame which best sets off their finer qualities—into unnatural exile
and the poor despised companionship of their own sex?
And what must be the force of that malady which drives them I
The long levers that ultimately exert their power on the palaces of
Florence are worked from England. Behind each of these solitary
ladies, in the English background, there must be a mysterious male
—relative, friend, lawyer, stockbroker—advising, controlling,
forwarding cheques and cheques and cheques, always. These ladies,
economically, are dolls of a financial system. Or you may call them
the waste products of an arthritic civilisation. What a force is behind
them, that they should possess themselves of another age and
genius, and live in it as conquerors, modifying manners,
architecture, and even perhaps language! The cloaked lady in front
of the grille shall, if you choose, fairly be likened to a barbarian on
the threshold of a philosopher’s dead court; hut as regards mere
force, one may say that in her the Strozzis are up against an equal.
 II—THE SEVENTH OF MAY, 1910

I
t was an exquisitely beautiful Italian morning, promising heat
that a mild and constant breeze would temper. The East was
one glitter. Harmless clouds were loitering across the pale sky,
and across the Piazza children were taking the longest way to early
school, as I passed from the clear sunshine into the soft transparent
gloom of one of the great pantheons of Italy—a vast thirteenth-
century Franciscan church, the largest church ever built by any
mendicant Order—carved and decorated and painted by Donatello,
Giotto, Andrea della Robbia, Rossellino, Maiano, Taddeo Gaddi,
Verrocchio, the incomparable Mino da Fiesole, Vasari, Canova.
Already the whole place had been cleansed and swept, but at one
of the remotest altars a charwoman was dusting. Little by little I
descried other visitors in the distance, moving quietly under the
intimidation of that calm, afraid to be the first to break the morning
stillness. There was the red gleam of a Baedeker. At a nearer altar a
widow in black was kneeling in one of those attitudes of impassioned
surrender and appeal that strike you so curiously, when for instance,
you go out of Harrods’ Stores suddenly into the Brompton Oratory.
From an unseen chapel came the sound of chanting, perfunctory, a
part of the silence; and last of all, at still another altar, I made out a
richly coloured priest genuflecting, all alone, save for a black acolyte.
In a corner two guides were talking business, and by the doors the
beggars were talking business in ordinary tones before the official
whining of the day should commence. The immense interior had
spaciousness for innumerable separate and diverse activities, each
undisturbed by the others. And all around me were the tombs and
cenotaphs of great or notorious men, who had made the glory and
the destiny of Italy; Dante, Galileo, Michael Angelo, Donatello,
Machiavelli; and Alfieri, Rossini, Aretino, Cherubini, Alberti; and even
St. Louis, and a famous fourteenth century English Bishop, and a
couple of Bonapartes; many ages, races, climes.

I sat down and opened the damp newspaper which I had just
bought outside at the foot of the steps leading up to the dazzling
marble façade. And when I had been staring at the newspaper some
time I became aware that the widow at the altar in the middle
distance had risen and was leaving the church, and then I saw to my
surprise that she was an Irish lady staying in my hotel. She passed
near me. Should I stop her, or should I not? I wanted to stop her,
from the naïve pride which one feels in being able to communicate a
startling piece of news of the first magnitude. But on the other hand,
I really was nervous about telling her. To tell her seemed brutal,
seemed like knocking her down. This was my feeling. She decided
the question for me by deviating from her path to greet me.
 “What a lovely morning!” she said.
“Have you heard about the King?” I asked her gruffly, well
knowing that she had not.
“No,” she answered smiling. And then, as she looked at me, her
smile faded.
“Well,” I said, “he’s dead!”
“What! Our King?”
“Yes. He died at midnight. Here it is.” And I showed her the
“Recentissime” or Latest News page of the newspaper, two lines in
leaded type: “Londra, 7, ore 2:30 (Urgenza). Re Edoardo è morto a
mezzanotte.” She knew enough Italian to comprehend that.
“This last midnight?” She was breathless.
“Yes.”
“But—but—no one even knew anything about him being ill?” she
protested.
“Yesterday evening’s Italian papers had columns about the illness
—it was bronchitis,” I said grimly.
“Oh!” she said, “I never see the Italian papers.”
Yet the name of Edward the Seventh had been on every
newspaper placard in the land on Friday night. But in Italy these
British have literally no sight for anything later than the sixteenth
century.
Tears stood in her eyes. On my part it would have been just as
kindly to knock her down.
“Just think of that little fellow at Osborne—he’s got to be Prince of
Wales now, and I suppose they’ll take him away from there,” she
murmured brokenly, as she went off, aghast.

I sat down again. It seemed to me, as I reflected among these

tombs and cenotaphs, that a woman’s eyes, on such an occasion,
were a good test of the genuineness of popular affection.
I then noticed that, while the Irish lady and I had been
whispering, another acquaintance of mine had mysteriously entered
the church without my cognizance and had set up his tent in the
south transept. This was a young man who, having gained a
prominent place in a certain competition at the Royal College of Art,
had been sent off with money in his pocket, at the expense of the
British nation, to study art and to paint in Italy. He possessed what
is called a travelling scholarship, and the treasures of Italy were at
his feet as at the feet of a conqueror. Already he had visited me at
my hotel, and filled my room with the odour of his fresh oil-sketches.
There were only two things in his head—the art of painting, and the
prospect of an immediate visit to Venice. He had lodged his easel on
a memorial-stone among the flags of the pavement, and was
painting a vista of tombs ending in a bright light of stained glass. His
habit was to paint before the museums opened and after they
closed. I went and accosted him. Again I was conscious of the naïve
pride of a bringer of tragic tidings. He was young and strong, with
fire in his eye. I need not be afraid of knocking him down, at any
rate.
“The King’s dead,” I said.
He lifted his brush.
“Not—?”
I nodded.
He burst out with a tremendous, “By Jove!” that broke that fresh
morning stillness once for all, and faintly echoed into silence among
those tombs. “By Jove!”
His imagination had at once risen to the solemn grandeur of the
event, as an event; but the sharp significance of death did not
penetrate the armour of that enthusiastic youthfulness. “What a
pity!” he exclaimed nicely; but he could not get the iridescent vision
of Venice out of his head, nor the problems of his canvas. He
continued painting—what else could he do?—and then, after a few
moments, he said eagerly, “I wish I was in London!”
 “Me too!” I said.
Probably most of the thousands of Englishmen in Italy had the
same wish.

I departed from the church. The chanting had ceased; the guides
were still talking business, but the beggars had begun to whine.
In the dining-room of the hotel there was absolute silence. A lady
near the door, with an Italian newspaper over her coffee-cup, who
had never spoken to me before, and would probably never speak to
me again, said:
“I suppose you’ve heard about—”
“Yes,” I said.
Everybody in the room knew. Everybody was
English. And nobody spoke. As the guests came down by ones and
twos to breakfast, the lady near the door stopped each of them: “I
suppose you’ve heard—” But none of them had. I was her sole
failure. At length a retired military officer came down, already
informed. “Where does this news come from?” he demanded of the
room, impatiently, cautiously, half-incredulously, as one who would
hesitate to trust any information that he had not seen in a London
daily. With a single inflection of his commanding voice he wiped out
the whole Press of Italy—that country of excellent newspapers. He
got little answer. We all sat silent.
 III—MORE ITALIAN OPERA

G
eographical considerations made it impossible for me to be
present at the performance of La Traviata, which opened the
Covent Garden season. I solaced myself by going to hear, on
that very night, another and better opera of Verdi’s, Aida, in a
theatre certainly more capacious than Covent Garden, namely, the
Politeamo Fiorentino, at Florence. Florence is a city of huge theatres,
which seem to be generally empty, even during performances, and
often on sale. In the majority of them the weather is little by little
getting the better of the ceiling; and the multifarious attendants,
young and old, go about their casual vague business of letting
cushions or selling cigars in raiment that has the rich, storied
interest of antiquity. But on this particular occasion prosperity
attended a Florentine theatrical enterprise. I was one of three
thousand or so excited and crowded beings, most of whom had paid
a fair price for admission to hear the brassiest opera ever composed.
Once I used to condescend to Verdi. That was in the early
nineties, when, at an impressionable and violent age, I got caught in
the first genuine Wagner craze that attacked this country. We used
to go to the special German seasons at Drury Lane, as it were to
High Mass. And although Max Alvary and Frau Klafsky would be
singing in Tristan, you might comfortably have put all the occupants
of the upper circle into a Pullman car. Once a cat walked across the
stage during a solemn moment in the career of Isolde, and nearly
everybody laughed; a few tittered, which was even more odious.
Only a handful, of such as myself, scowled angrily—not at the cat,
which was really rather fine in the garden, completing it—but at the
infantile unseriousness of these sniggering so-called Wagnerians. I
felt that laughter would have been very well at a Verdi performance,
might even have enhanced it. Meanwhile, over the way at Convent
Garden, Verdi performances were being given to the usual full
houses. It never occurred to me to attend them. Verdi was vulgar. I
cannot explain my conviction that Verdi was vulgar, because I had
not heard a single opera of Verdi’s, save his Wagnerian imitations.
No doubt it arose out of the deep human instinct to intensify the
pleasure of admiring one thing by simultaneously disparaging
another thing.
Then, a long time afterwards, in the comparatively calm interval
between the first and the second Wagner crazes, I heard the real
Verdi. It was La Traviata, in a little town in Italy, and it was the first
operatic performance I had attended in Italy. I adored it, when I was
not privately laughing at it; and there are one or two airs in it, which
I would sit through the whole opera to hear, if I could not hear them
otherwise. (Happily they occur in the first act.) Yes, Verdi’s name
does not begin with W; but it very nearly does. I stuck him up at
once a little lower than the angels, and I have never pulled him
down. It is certain, however, that La Traviata at any rate cannot live,
unless as a comic opera. I personally did not laugh aloud, because
the English are seldom cruel in a theatre; but the tragical parts are
undoubtedly very funny indeed, funnier even than the tragical parts
of the exquisitely absurd play, La Dame aux Camélias, upon which
the opera is founded. When La Traviata was first produced, about
fifty-five years ago, in Venice, its unconscious humour brought about
an absolute, a disastrous failure. The performance ended amid roars
of laughter. Unhappily the enormous proportions of Signora
Donatelli, who sang Violetta, aided the fiasco. When the doctor
announced that this lady was in an advanced stage of consumption
and had but a few hours to live, Harry Lauder himself could not have
had a greater success of hilarity with the mob. Italians are like that.
They may be devoted to music—though there are reasons for
doubting it—but as opera-goers and concert-goers they are a
godless crew. An Englishman would have laughed at Violetta’s
unconsumptive waist, but he would have laughed in the street, or
the next morning. The English have reverence, and when they go to
the opera, they go to hear the opera.
 When Italians go to the opera, they are apparently out for a lark,
and they have some of the qualities of the Roman multitude
enjoying wild beasts in the amphitheatre. I think I have never been
to an operatic performance in Italy without acutely noticing this.
When I went to hear Aida, the colossal interior of the Politeamo
Fiorentino had the very look of an amphitheatre, with its row of
heads and hats stretching away smaller and smaller into a haze.
There were notices about appealing to the gentleness of the public
not to smoke. But do you suppose the public did not smoke?
Especially considering that the management thoughtfully offered
cigars, cigarettes, and matches for sale! In a very large assemblage
of tightly-packed people, unauthorised noises are bound to occur
from time to time. Now, an Italian audience will never leave an
unauthorised noise alone. If a chair creaks, or a glass on the bar
tinkles, an Italian audience will hiss savagely and loudly for several
seconds—which seem like several minutes. Not in the hope of
stopping the noise, for the noise has stopped! Not because it wishes
not to miss a note of the music, for it misses about twenty-five per
cent, of the notes through its own fugal hissing! But from simple,
truculent savagery! It cares naught for the susceptibilities of the
artists. Whether a singer is in the midst of a tender pianissimo, or
the band is blaring its best, if an Italian audience hears a noise,
however innocent, it will multiply that noise by a hundred. Yet the
individual politeness of the Italian people is perfectly delightful.
Further: In the middle of the performance a shabby gentleman
came on to the stage and begged indulgence for an artist who was
“gravely indisposed.” The audience received him with cynical
laughter; he made a gesture of cynical resignation and departed.
The artist received no indulgence. The artist was silly enough to hold
on powerfully to a high note at the end of a long solo; and that solo
had to be given again—and let there be no mistake about it!—
despite the protests of a minority against such insistence. The Latin
temperament! If you sing in opera in Italy, your career may be
unremunerative, but it will be exciting. You may be deified, or you
may be half-killed. But be assured that the audience is sincere, as
sincere as a tiger.

Composers also must beware. When Pasini’s new opera, Don

Quixote, was produced lately, it had a glorious run of two
performances. It was, indeed, received with execration. After the
second night the leading newspaper appeared with a few brief,
barbed remarks: “The season of the Teatro Verdi is ended. It would
have been better if it had never started.. . . The maestro Pasini has
written an opera which may be very pleasing—to deaf mutes.” Yet
Don Quixote was not worse than many other operas which people
pay to see. Imagine these manners in unmusical England.
France is less crude, but not always very much less crude. The
most musical city in France is Toulouse. An extraordinary number of
singers, composers, and poets seem to be born in Toulouse.
But the debuts of an operatic artist at the Toulouse municipal
opera are among the most dangerous and terrible experiences that
can fall to a singer. The audience is merciless, and recks not of youth
nor sex. If it is not satisfied, it expresses its opinion frankly, and for
the more frank and effective expression of its opinion it goes to the
performance suitably provided with decayed vegetables. And I am
told that Marseilles candour is carried even further. As for Naples—.
 Perhaps, after all, our admirable politeness and the solemnity of
our attitude towards the whole subject of opera merely prove that
Continental nations are right in regarding us as fundamentally
unmusical. With us opera is a cultivated exotic. In Italy, what does it
matter if you ruin a composer’s career, or even kill a young soprano
who has not reached your standard! There are quantities of
composers and sopranos all over Italy. You can see them active in
the very streets. You can’t keep them down. We say Miss
—————-, the English soprano, in startled accents of pride. Italians
don’t say Signorina —————‘, the Italian soprano. In Italy you get
a new opera about once a month. The last English grand opera that
held the English stage was Artaxeræes, and it is so long ago that not
one person in a hundred who reads these lines will be able to give
the name of the composer. Can any nation be musical which does
not listen chiefly to its own music?
THE RIVIERA—1907
 I—THE HÔTEL TRISTE

B
ecause I am a light and uneasy sleeper I can hear, at a
quarter to six every morning, the distant subterranean sound
of a peculiarly energetic bell. It rings for about one minute,
and it is a signal at which They quit their drowsy beds. And all along
the Riviera coast, from Toulon to San Remo, in the misty and chill
dawn, They are doing the same thing, beginning the great daily
conspiracy to persuade me, and those like me, that we are really the
Sultan, and that our previous life has been a dream. I sink back into
slumber and hear the monotonous roar of the tideless Mediterranean
in my sleep. The Mediterranean, too, is in the conspiracy. It is
extremely inconvenient and annoying to have to go running about
after a sea which wanders across half a mile of beach twice a day;
appreciating this, and knowing the violent objection of sultans to any
sort of trouble, the Mediterranean dispenses with a tide; at any hour
it may be found tirelessly washing the same stone. After an interval
of time, during which a quarter to six in the morning has receded to
the middle of the night, I wake up wide, and instantly, in Whitman’s
phrase,

I know I am august.

I put my hand through the mosquito curtains and touch an

electrical contrivance placed there for my benefit, and immediately
there appears before me a woman neatly clothed to delight my eye,
and I gaze out at her through my mosquito curtains. She wishes me
“Good morning” in my own language, in order to save the trouble of
unnecessary comprehension, and if I had happened to be Italian,
French, or German she could still greet me in my own language,
because she has been taught to do so in order to save me trouble.
She takes my commands for the morning, and then I notice that the
sun has thoughtfully got round to my window and is casting a
respectful beam or two on my hyacinthine locks. In the vast palace
the sultans are arising, and I catch the rumour thereof. Presently,
with various and intricate aid, I have laved the imperial limbs and
assumed the robes of state. The window is opened for me, and I
pass out on to the balcony and languidly applaud the Mediterranean,
like a king diverting himself for half an hour at the opera. It is a
great sight, me applauding the Mediterranean as I drink a cup of
tea; stockbrokers clapping the dinner-band at the Trocadero would
be nothing to it. After this I do an unmonarchical act, an act of
which I ought to be ashamed, and which I keep a profound secret
from the other sultans in the vast palace—I earn my living by sheer
hard labour.
Then I descend to the banqueting-hall, and no sooner do I appear
than I am surrounded by minions in black, an extraordinary race of
persons. At different hours I see these mysterious minions in black,
and sometimes I observe them surreptitiously. They have no names.
They never eat, never drink, never smile, never love, never do
anything except offer me prepared meats with respectful
complacency. Their god is my stomach, and they have made up their
minds that it must be appeased with frequent burnt sacrifices and
libations. They watch my glance as mariners the sky, and the
slightest hint sends them flying. At the conclusion of the ceremony
they usher me out of the hall with obeisances into other halls and
other deferential silences.
 And when the entire rite has been repeated twice we recline on
sofas, I and the other sultans, and spend the final hours of the
imperial day in being sad and silent together. We are sad because
we are sultans. It is in the nature of things that sultans should be
sad; it is not the cares of state which make us sad, but merely a
high imperial instinct for the correct. Silence is, of course, a
necessity to sultans, and for this reason the activity of the immense
palace is conducted solely in hushed tones. The minions in black
never raise their dulcet voices more than half an inch or so. Late at
night, as I pass on my solitary, sad way to the chamber of sleep, I
see them, those mysterious minions with no names and no passions
and no heed for food, still hovering expectant, still bowing, still
silent. And lastly I retire. I find my couch beautifully laid out, I
cautiously place myself upon it, I savour the soundless calm of the
palace, and I sleep again; and my closing thought is the thought
that I am august, and that all the other sultans, in this and all the
other palaces from Toulon to San Remo, are august.

Strange things happen. Once a week a very-strange thing

happens. I find an envelope lying about. It is never given to me
openly. I may discover it propped up against the teapot on my tea-
tray, or on my writing-desk, or sandwiched in my “post,” between a
love-letter and a picture post card. But I invariably do find it;
measures are taken that I shall succeed promptly in finding it. All the
minions pretend that this envelope is a matter of no importance
whatever; I also pretend the same. Now, the fact is that I simply
hate this envelope; I hate the sight of it; I hate to open it; I dread
its contents. Every week it shocks me. I carry it about with me in my
imperial pocket for several hours, fighting against the inevitable.
Then at length I dismally yield to a compulsion. And I wander, by
accident on purpose, in the direction of a little glass-partitioned
room, where a malevolent man sits like a spider sits in its web. We
both pretend I am there by chance, but since I am in fact there, I
may as well—a pure formality! And a keen listener might hear a
golden chink or the rustle of paper. And then I feel feeble but
relieved, as if I had come out of the dentist’s. And I am aware that I
am not so excessively august after all, and that I am in the middle of
the Riviera season, when one must expect, etc., etc., and that even
the scenery was scientifically reduced to figures in that envelope,
and that anyhow the Hôtel Triste is the Hôtel Triste. (Triste is not its
real name; one of my fellow sultans, who also does the shameful act
in secret, so baptised it in a ribald moment.)
 The strangest thing of all occurred one night. I was walking
moodily along the convenient marge of the Mediterranean when I
saw a man, a human being, dressed in a check suit and a howler
hat, talking to another human being dressed in a blouse and a skirt.
I passed them. The man was smiling, and chattering loudly and
rapidly and even passionately to the soul within the blouse. Soon
they parted, with proofs of affection, and the man strode away and
overtook and left me behind. You could have knocked me down with
a feather when I perceived he was one of the mysterious nameless
minions who I thought always wore mourning and never ate, drank,
smiled, or loved. “Fellow wanderer in the Infinite,” I addressed his
back as soon as I had recovered, “What are your opinions upon life
and death and love, and the advisability of being august?”
 II—WAR!

W
e were in the billiard-room—English men and women
collected from various parts of the earth, and enjoying that
state of intimacy which is somehow produced by the
comfortable click of billiard balls. It is extraordinary what pretty
things the balls say of a night in the billiard-room of a good hotel.
They say: “You are very good-natured and jolly people. Click.
Women spoil the play, but it’s nice to have them here. Click. And so
well-dressed and smiling and feminine I Click. Click. Cigars are good
and digestion is good. Click. How correct and refined and broad-
minded you all are! All’s right with the world. Click.” A stockbroker
sat near me by the fire. My previous experience of stockbrokers had
led me to suppose that all stockbrokers were pursy, middle-aged,
hard-breathers, thick-fingered, with a sure taste in wines, steaks,
and musical comedies. But this one was very different—except
perhaps on the point of musical comedies. He was quite young,
quite thin, quite simple. In fact, he was what is known as an English
gentleman. He frankly enjoyed showing young ladies aged twenty-
three how to make a loser off the red, and talking about waltzes,
travel, and sport. He never said anything original, and so never
surprised one nor made one feel uncomfortable. He was extremely
amiable, and we all liked him. The sole fact about the Stock
Exchange which I gleamed from him was that the Stock Exchange
comprised many bounders, and “you had to be civil to ‘em, too.”
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