"Where all the other business of London is
done, down below. Dinners also are laid on
and supplied through pipes. A good house like
this has its own special supply-pipe ; average
people are content to draw their dinners from
the main. There is a fixed hour for turning on
the supply, and the details of the main dinner
for every day, with the exact minute when each
article will be laid on, are shouted by steam
through all the pipes at eight o'clock every
morning."

"You surprise me. I should like to see the
London kitchen. Meanwhile, may I again ask,
if a man now wanted a hot mutton chop, how
would he get it?"

"There, Bokins, dinner's over, and the night-
workers are off below. Now you shall see
something like work!"

"Night-workers?"

"Yes. Nobody's trade stops. They have
organised day and night watches, and work in
gangs, so that nobody's trade ever stops. Above
ground you see all these advanced notions of
luxury and enjoyment— "

"Roast terrier and rat soup, yes. Earwig
sauce, yes — "

"My dear Bokins, you ought to be ashamed
to exhibit those degraded antediluvian
prejudices. Don't you know that in England, before
your time, there were Britons who would have
loathed roast goose and apple-sauce, or hare and
currant-jelly. Because five hundred years ago
the gourmand, dead to all the delicacies of the
insect world, was yet ignorant of the piquancy
of the earwig, or the flavour of the round fat
body of the spider sopped in ant juice— "

"Narrenpossenindiezukunft, don't! You
make me very ill."

"Well, come below. Here, through the
rosary, and down with all these people."

As we descended, the earth seemed to rock
about us. There was not more noise than in
the whiz and rumble of a single smooth
machine, but crowded galleries were black with
men like ants, in the workings of an ant-heap,
and in the ways between them vehicles—
smokeless, steamless, and with no visible motive-
power — sped swift as lightning, stopping
instantly, obedient to a touch. Every wall was
honeycombed into shops and warehouses, where
bales swung swiftly in and out, up and down.
The men on foot flew to and fro, as if on magic
skates, by help of what my friend called the
"new motive bootsole," and disappeared or
appeared incessantly, like harlequins, by leaps
through small holes in the wall.

"Why do they make harlequins of
themselves?" I asked. "Why don't they walk like
reasonable men?"

"Reasonable men, Bokins? Why, now that
London, Manchester, Liverpool, and Birmingham,
have run together, and are just so many
districts of the town, how is a man to get about
in the old way. Look here, my friend. For a
little while it would answer well enough to pave
these great underground streets with india-rubber
pavement at the side, and put five hundred mile
an hour vehicles to run in the road. But a man
can't afford to take an hour for every five
hundred miles he goes ; so we have long since
set up the system of short cuts through these
pairs of electro-pneumatic tubing. You see the
walls are riddled with them, and they are all
labelled. Here, for example, 'To the Manchester
Exchange, one minute.' Under it, 'From the
Manchester Exchange, one minute. 'You want
to go to that part of town. Jump in here,
and in a minute you are sucked electrically to
the other end. Your business done, you
return by the other tube. No accident is possible.
You, and those before and those behind you,
all slide at one pace. Even if you got into the
wrong tube, being against the current, you
would be spat out again immediately."

"What an enormous press of business is done
under the turf of London streets," I said.
"Hollo! Here is a railed-off well. What's
this?"

"Can't you read, my dear Bokins. 'Direct
Central Fire Route to Victoria, in half an hour.'
You travel the whole way in iced carriages.
Three minutes are allowed for chops cooked at
the Central Fire Refreshment station."

"Are they so?" said I. "Then that is my
train."

I took that train, but when I got out at the
central fire station, I felt a choking and a
burning, and deliriously thought I was a chop
on a gridiron, with my chest being burnt and
smoked, as it lay on the iron bar just over a
lively burst of gas from a rebellious coal. The
pain of this flame at the pit of my stomach
caused me to leap to my feet.

"Hollo," said Narrenpossenindiezukunft, who
was filling the air with dense smoke of tobacco.
"Soon awake! You snored so defiantly after I
had explained one or two of the schemes I am
going to carry out, that nobody dared move,
or possibly I might have rung for candles. As
it is, you see, we are in the dark."

THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER,
A New Series of Occasional Papers
By CHARLES DICKENS,
WILL BE RESUMED NEXT WEEK.

MR. CHARLES DICKENS'S READINGS.
HANOVER SQUARE ROOMS. On Thursday Evening, April 23,
MR. CHARLES DICKENS will read his
NICHOLAS NICKLEBY AT MR. SQUEERS'S
SCHOOL,
AND
BOOTS AT THE HOLLY TREE INN.
And on Tuesday Evening, April 28, his
CHRISTMAS CAROL, AND THE TRIAL
FROM PICKWICK.
Stalls, 5s. Centre Seats, 2s. Back Seats, 1s.
Tickets to be had at the Office of All the Year Round, 26, Wellington-
street, Strand ; of Mr. JOHN POTTLE, 14 and 15, Royal Exchange,
City; Messrs. CHAPMAN and HALL'S, Publishers, 193, Piccadilly; at
AUSTIN'S Ticket Office. St. James's Hall; and at PAYNE'S Ticket
Office, Hanover Square Rooms.