Walking-Stick Papers

r, sweet

my sweet bloo

, you'll bu

r clothes sw

d it was so she sang through the street. By this you know wh

ng for an instant with the original of a coloured print of old Lond

yes, by now I knew

he added, eyeing

icky Davis "discovered" London, they, the British, would have seen enough of us to have become acc

a huge young woman who could have punched my head in

ard, don't you?" Then, perhaps feeling that she may have offended me, she quickl

understand why she was so beautiful. Then I perceived that it was because of her nose. She looked just like the goddesses of the Elgin marbles, who

fame, so that when you go again to London

flesh (such I have been told it is), each on a sliver of stick. There was a little dog playing ab

the dog to a ha'penny's worth of meat. "Thank you, sir," said the cats' meat man. I saw by the lig

d said never a word. Perhaps he was not an Englishman. No, I think he was a

?" I asked. "Thri'pence?"

ant very distinctly. It was but his

my democratic way to the very small office boy. "You are looking bet

re, sir," replied the

im, apologising for

in. I had quite forgotten the office boy. I handed him my ca

dabs of clay, one labelled England, the other America. Tiny ships ply back and forth between the two countries. Observers cannot make out how it is that

"topper," his black tail coat, his buttonhole, his checked trowsers, his large grey spats, his shining boots, his stick and his glass on its ribbon, app

s blank stare, quite through. Then he lifted his eyebrow; the glass dropped and bounded before him on its ribbon. And he turned and walked away. Walked away, I dare

y a suffragette who lost her life in the act. Well, most of the fine gentlemen of England, I think, were there, all in splend

, neatly lift your pocket out. I thought this was an interesting thing, so I told it about

d. I, an American, had come over there and had my pocket cut. He, the crook, an

icab drivers in London, those who are unfortunate, have fallen from a high estate. Eac

mbed noses. Not at all like the alert, athletic lads, a type of mechanical engineer,

who drove me from the n

pping, to Chelsea, wher

pleasure of driving

ou, sir,

d a good cobbler. He told me that there was an excellent one in Battersea. "In Batterse

the cobbler a card and he'll send

d saying that the boots are done and so on. And in the mean

setting out straight off to find a cobbler. But my landlord would not

nd. He did not want lodgers, I understood, going in and out of his house with parcels under thei

lodger?" asked the firs

nd housemaid. "But he's not a gentleman. He h

rifle, sir?" asked the

't had t

at; isn't it?-our just

red to as "Yankees" or

s the "American Ambassa

ve even heard Dr. Wil

ent of

New York. I found him going into the Houses of Parliament. I was

ia gallery, the Prince's chamber, the sumptuously decorated House of Peers, the Peers' lobby, the spacious central hall, the Commons' corridor and the House of Commons; glancing about him the while at ar

to do that?" said my frie

fteen minutes

oss the way and "do" the Abbey nex

me. Later I heard of two Americans who drove up to the abbey in a taxi. Leaping out, one said t

o him. There were two of us in the railway carriage compartment on my way down into Surrey. I made a number of amiable observations; I as

say that he didn't know. "I shouldn't undertake to say, sir," was his answer.

front of him. I concluded that he was "sore" at me; I concluded that he

and then; at old, old railway stations, that remind one agreeably of jails, rough-looking men in black shirt sleeves and corduroy wai

indow, he said to me in the pleasantest manner possible: "Good aufternoon, sir."

t again the old red hills, bird enchanted, and dip the valleys bright with sward, to the wind on the heath, brother, to hills and the sea, to lonely downs, to hold converse with simple shepherd men, and, when even fell, the million

(wherein, at one side, he carried his pipe), so that his trowsers flared at the bottom like a sailor's; over his shoulder he bore a flat straw basket. Under his chin were whiskers; his eyes we

ses which we were approaching, thirty miles or so from London. The last time he been to London was when he was fifteen. He had then seen some firework

born in Capel,

he had been born sev

nty town I tried and I could not find where to lay my head. Everything was, as they say in England, "full up." It was co

ould not give me a room, but offered me a bed and breakfast at half a crown. "There's another fellow up th

gun over the mantelpiece, a great deal of painted china and a group of stuffed birds in a glass case. He

my heavy host with his candle up difficult s

leep!" I exclai

you know. But they are nice quiet fellows. Something

the morning, rather inoffensive young fellows, all cyclists, and indeed not altogether unlike mysel

s Sunday, after three o'clock in the afternoon and not yet six; and to obtain refreshment at a public house at tha

t who when the Queen had commanded his presence said, "I'm an old man, ma'am, and I'll take a seat." When Annie, the maid, had brought my "shaving water

I see you are an American, sir," said the shopman. "This is a chemist's shop," he explai

t-whatever the name of it is-where, I understood, the place was where this was t