promised would happen in every particular but one, an important one.
During the journey to London my wife comforted me, whenever I complained of the Spanish Jug's excessive weight, by drawing word-pictures of Victoria adorned with the Spanish Jug and prophesying about the great draughts of cold water which I should, during the hot days, quaff from the Spanish Jug. She said that she would never have let me burden us with the jug if I had not been so mad about it in Madrid, if I had not persuaded her, with all that about Victoria and the coldness of water kept in such jugs, to let me buy it. So, mindful of my past enthusiasm, I, sweating, carried it through innumerable railway stations and customs-houses into steamboats and omnibuses and cabs and restaurants and railway carriages and buffets. For it was too fragile for a porter's clumsy hands.
At last I sat upon it, as I have told. But I did not crush it. It was not fragile enough for that.
Suppose I finish with the Spanish Jug now and for ever. Let me advance this narrative about twenty minutes.
While the harp and the harp-case were earning me the undying hatred of the flyman, the driver of the luggage cart, the driver of the milk-float, and the gardener at our cottage, I, passing through
