London Days

ans for getting everywhere as there are now, and yet we got everywhere,-everywhere, that is, that we wished to go. We were not in a hurry then, and there was more consideration for the

telephone was unknown. It is almost unknown to-day, if London's use of it be compared with New York's. There was no electric traction, and the petrol age was nearly a quarter of a century distant. But

othing like it, you are sorry for those who must live elsewhere and cannot come under its spell; they have missed that much out of life. You experience a

stless and restful, that the farther you go the more puzzled you become, unless having begun by questioning it you end by accepting. Take it in its own way and you will see that it is i

n-place and melancholy builders' work that encumbers London. Yet how the mean shops press upon St. Paul's and shut it in! Could anything be uglier than the National Gallery? Could any important thoroughfare be more conducive to depression of spirits than Victoria Street? It's not the old Lo

neither imitate nor aspire. "The finest site in Europe" is almost the meanest sight. The marvel is that a capital and a country having so many fine models of earlier date do not repeat them, improve upon them, or attempt even a finer taste. The opportunities have been unrivalled, but about the achievements the less said the better. Acres of slums have been swept away to be superseded by miles of masonry which serve mainly

tural advantage that a patient Providence could bestow. In its buildings of a private character, its domestic architecture, London still has much to seek; monotony has been the rule, but the style has not deteriorated. In some respects and localities it has much improved; there is evidence that imagination has been allowed to exercise itself, that all house owners do

, and that he has not learned how to warm his house. The tough survive. The delicate, the aged, the invalid, or the sedentary take their chances, and while they live do so with an unbelievable lack of comfort. Consequently the English complain of cold when the American would think the temperature moderate; but the American uses heat to keep his house dry as well as warm. He often overdoes it; he often goes as far in one direction as the Briton in the other. But an English house warmed in the American way, not necessarily to the usual American degree, is always appreciated by the Briton, although he may be far from understanding the reason of his content. London had a charm in the late seventies that it lost when the Twentieth Century was still young,-the charm of leisure. The internal-combustion engine drove leisure from the land. The old two-horse 'bus was a leisurely thing. Even the four-horse express

dream that, when I first entered an English train, the custom was for the railway gua

song have disappeared one by one. Even the muffin man is vocal no longer, and his bell is silent. Whatever may have caused the other merchants of the curb to vanish, th

our solicitor, or appear at your banker's, or negotiate a contract, much less intrude upon an official person. The silk hat was a sign of respectability. In the House of Commons it seemed a symbol of the majesty of the British Constitution. There, to this day, the head must be covered, as if the members were in a synagogue. In sum

s fortunes were thought hazardous. There was no Metropole, or Victoria, although their walls were going up. Rimmel's perfumery warehouse stood where the Savoy is now, and that sordid adventurer Hobbs (or was it Jabez Balfour?) had not pre?mpted the site of the Cecil which was then covered with lodging houses,

Coliseum; St. James' Hall, but no Queen's Hall; the Albert Hall was mostly empty, the old-style music halls were mostly full; Mr. Pinero was acting small parts in Irving's company and had not written so much as the scenario of a one-act play; Henry Arthur Jones had not been heard of; Bernard Shaw was unknown, Adelaide Neil

y Wood, and, of course, Ouida, as they would delight now if these ladies were spinning copy; Kipling was at school, and Barrie dreaming in the north. We had William Black and Walter Besant and James Rice, but no Society of Authors, and no literary knights. If the world

orts of France in 1914, as all the world knows, and none know better than the Huns. But they were dandies too, those earlier men, and they filled the eye. Their saucy scarlet, short-waisted jackets, their jaunty fatigue caps, their tight trousers with broad red stripes, on shapely legs which seemed tremen