WORLD'S END

Inside the racetrack the big busses were lined all the way down the straight. The weather was fine, and everybody happy. The royal family put in an early appearance, and the King and Queen stood in the royal box and received a hearty ovation. "Bumbles" pointed out to Lanny the precautions taken to keep the suffragettes from interfering with the.race; for last year one of them had dashed out and thrown herself under the horses' hoofs and got killed - "the daughter of a very good family, too," said his lordship, with disgust. To keep that from happening a second time the track had been lined with three sets of railings, and police and soldiers were watching all the way around. Every Derby receives a name, and this one was dubbed "the silent Derby," because a French horse won and two outsiders were placed; the favorites were nowhere, so that everybody lost money except the bookies.

IV

At the next week-end came the art lover Rick, and they saw the Russians in Le Coq d’Or by Rimsky-Korsakov. They saw the foolish King Dodon with a tall gold crown and a great black bear.d to his waist, and a huge warrior in chain mail, with a curved sword half as big as himself and shining like a bass tuba. This was the Tsar's own ballet troupe, trained for the dance since early childhood, and all London raved over them. Lanny's enthusiasm for dancing came back, and he and Rick exhausted themselves trying to reproduce those amazing Muscovite leaps.

Also, they went to hear Chaliapin, an enormous blond man with a voice that filled the firmament. They went to see Westminster Abbey, and found a fashionable wedding going on; they heard the clamor of high-toned bells, and got a glimpse of the bridal pair emerging, one in a cloud of tulle, the other with a pale, peaked face, dwarfed by a tall black cylinder on top. Rick didn't seem to think very highly of the old families which ruled his country; he said the groom was probably dim-witted, while the bride would be the daughter of a brewer or a South African diamond king.

Later on came the Trooping of the King's Colours on the Horse Guards' Parade, the occasion being the King's "official birthday": a gorgeous ceremony with a troop of horsemen wearing huge bearskin hats. The King rode at their head, a frail-looking gentleman with dark brown mustaches and beard closely trimmed. They had mounted one of those bearskins on top of him, also a uniform much too large for him, loaded with gold epaulets and a belt, a wide blue sash, and a variety of stars and orders. The young Prince of Wales looked still more uncomfortable, having a pathetic thin face and a sword which he would have had a hard time brandishing.

They made the Queen colonel-in-chief of a regiment; her uniform was blue, all over gold in front, and her hat was of fur with a blue bag hanging from it, and a tall white pompon standing up a foot in the air. Lanny had seen in an American magazine a picture of a drum major in such a costume. He said that to Rick, who replied that the influence of this royal family was a very bad thing for England. "They give themselves up entirely to the tailoring and dressmaking business," said the severe young art lover. "Their friends are the big money snobs. If an artist receives honors, it is some painter of fashionable portraits. Titles are entirely a question of finance; you pay so much cash into the party treasury, and become Sir Snuffley Snooks or the Marquess of Paleale." In short, Sir Alfred Pomeroy-Nielson having got no honors for his efforts to promote little theaters in England, his eldest son thought ill of the government.

"Go and see it in action," he advised. So Lanny went on a weekday to Westminster, and was admitted to the visitors' gallery of the House of Commons, now covered with heavy wire net on account of suffragettes' attempts to throw themselves over the railing. Lanny looked down upon the members of the House, mostly wearing top hats, except for the Labour non-conformists. The front-benchers sprawled with their feet upon the bench in front of them. Any of the members, when they didn't like what was said, shouted loudly. The Labour men hated the Tories, the Tories hated the Liberals, and the Irish hated everybody. A fierce controversy was under way over the question of self-government for Ireland; the Ulstermen were swearing they would never be ruled by Catholics, and Sir Edward Carson was organizing an army and threatening civil war. In short, the Mother of Parliaments was hardly setting the best of examples to her children all over the world.

V