THE INFORMATION-MONGER.
PROITD is the youth of thirteen when a little girl sidles up to him and demands "the right time, Sir." With what a flourish he takes out his watch, and with what scrupulous accuracy he gives her the time. It is the first adventure which makes him feel a man. He has tasted the delights of giving information. He walks on with a more manly step ; he feels taller than he did ; be can face the world now with his head back. She called him "Sir," and she said "Thank you." Yes, a man would do anything for the first little girl who asks 'him the time. He does not forget her. She had ertraight brown hair and a plain, earnest face, and she was in charge of a number of babies. And she was a little nervous, for she was afraid she might be late for tea ; and be; after all, was a Stranger. She did not know how proud he was, how afraid he was that his watch might have stopped, how grateful he was for the "Sir," and the "Thank you."
For man, it seems, has a chronic desire to give information. He likes to tell you when a train goes, or how long it takes to get to such-and-such a place, or the best route to somewhere by the sea. He has a weakness for making maps. Give him a chance, and he will take out a piece of paper and waste half-an- hour or so in trying to make some way clear to you. Let him find you in a difficulty, and be will pounce on you as a hawk pounces on its prey. You are, say, in a country road. Hesitate a moment and he will attack you. He gets so clever at the game, this information-monger, that be can recognise his prey before it has a chance to escape. He will confuse you with detail, bewilder you with turns to the right and to the left, and give you the whole history of the district in two minutes. He does not like to let you go out of his sight ; he will say he is coming your way, and that he will put you right. He begins to take a pride in you; you have made him feel important; he is responsible for you. And when at last you escape, he will stand in the middle of the road and watch you ; and when you take, as you inevitably do, the wrong turning, you hear shouts, and you see the man in a very agony of gesticulation. You cannot avoid the man. He is always threatening you with his maps and his trains and his routes and his turns to the right and to the left; he is always coming your way, and he will always put you right. Sometimes you protest, ask him not to trouble, suggest he is wasting his time ; but he is not discouraged, for he loves the game, the game of giving information. Even though the information be unpleasant, be cannot resist giving it to you. He is always looking out for an undone bootlace, or for a ticket in danger of falling from your pocket, or for a glove that you have left in a railway carriage, or for a smut on your nose. He will not allow you to be singular; it is no use explaining that you prefer to have a smut on your nose. He likes to give you little pieces of information. He will tell you in a subdued, confidential voice, as if he were giving away some State secret, that he has at last discovered where you can get coffee. And although you know that he has told you something of no value, you are liable to fall into the same hushed, important manner and to make the man your friend. He is full of such secrets. He will tell you where you can get a certain biscuit, or a medicine, or brown bread of an extra- ordinary virtue. He will not allow you to smoke your own tobacco ; you must have his mixture; you can only get it at one place in England; he will give you the address, as you are his friend. He will advise you where to get your clothes, your pictures, your furniture, your wife. He will tell you when you should go to bed and when you should get up, what you should eat and what you should drink ; and he will assure you that there is only one golf-ball worth playing with, one restaurant worth dining at, one place worth living in. Meet him on his return from a holiday, and he will insist that you should go to the same place ; he will give you details of the cost, of the people, of what there is to do, and he will not be satisfied until you have spent a fortnight there. He is not happy unless he is telling you something. To him life is an opportunity for giving information, for putting people right, for going their way. He is rarely alone. If there is no higher game at hand, he will attack his landlady, tell her bow to cook potatoes, or how to lay a fire. Opposition encourages him ; but he does not argue with you; he tells you. And when you get up and say "Good-night" to him he will come with you to the door and remind you of the address for the tobacco; and the chances are that he will come to the corner with you and keep you there for some few minutes while he tells you the shortest way.
The man is not unusual. He is perhaps a child who has not grown out of the elementary desire to give informa- tion, to shout "Whip behind!" We all start by being policemen. Few of us in our youth, when we Bee other children hanging on to the back of a cart, can resist shouting "Whip behind!" It is one of the pet phrases of our childhood. You can hear it any day in the street. And some of us, it seems, do not grow out of the phrase. There are men who go through life shouting" Whip behind!" We are hanging on snd happy until some information-monger on the pavement who has not the spirit to join in the fun shouts "Whip behind !" and we find ourselves in an undignified and critical position. One of man's chief pleasures is this game of banging on. We all hang on, and we are all a little afraid of the driver. The pace, too, may at times get rather fast for BOMB of us, or ow hold may not be strong enough, so that we drop off; and then to console ourselves we join the information-monger on the pavement, and shout as lustily as we can, "Whip behind !" or, if we have the breath to be respectful, "Whip behind, guv'nor !"
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