tain by all possible means the pingpong championship of the world: values in the City collapsed at once. . . Dispatches from Bombay say that the Shah of Persia yesterday handed a golden slipper to the Grand Vizier Feebli Pasha as a sign that he might go and chase himself: the news was at once followed by a drop in oil, and a rapid attempt to liquidate everything that is fluid. . . But these mysteries of the City I do not pretend to explain. I have passed through the place dozens of times and never noticed anything particular in the way of depression or buoyancy, or falling oil, or rising rails. But no doubt it is there. A little beyond the City and farther down the river the visitor finds this district of London terminating in the gloomy and forbidding Tower, the principal penitentiary of the metropolis. Here Queen Victoria was imprisoned for many years. Excellent gasoline can be had at the American garage immediately north of the Tower, where motor repairs of all kinds are also carried on. These, however,, are but superficial pictures of London, gathered by the eye of the tourist. A far deeper meaning is found in the examination of the great historic monuments of the city. The principal ones of these are the Tower of London (just mentioned), the British Museum, and Westminster Abbey. No visitor to London should fail to see these. Indeed, he ought to feel that his visit to England is wasted unless he has seen them. I speak strongly on the point because I feel strongly on it. To my mind there is something about the grim fascination of the historic Tower, the cloistered quiet of the Museum, and the majesty of the ancient Abbey, which will make it the regret of my life that I didn't see any one of the three. I fully meant to, but I failed; and I can only hope that the circumstances of my failure may be helpful to other visitors. The Tower of London I most certainly intended to inspect. Each day, after the fashion of every tourist, I wrote for myself a little list of things to do, and I always put the Tower of London on it. No doubt the reader knows the kind of little list that I mean. It runs: 1. Go to bank. 3. National Picture Gallery. 5. Tower of London. The itinerary, I regret to say, was never carried out in full. I was able at times both to go to the bank and to buy a shirt in a single morning; at other times I was able to buy razor blades and almost to find the National Picture Gallery. Meantime I was urged on all sides by my London acquaintances not to fail to see the Tower. "There's a grim fascination about the place," they said; "you mustn't miss it." I am quite certain that in due course of time I should have made my way to the Tower but for the fact that I made a fatal discovery. I found out that the London people who urged me to go and see the Tower had never seen it themselves. It appears they never go near it. it. One night at a dinner a man next to me said: "Have you seen the Tower? You really ought to. There's a grim fascination about it.” I looked him in the face. "Have you seen it yourself?" I asked. "Oh yes," he answered, "I've seen it." Take the parallel case of the British Museum. Here is a place that is a veritable treasure house, a repository of some of the most priceless historical relics to be found upon the earth. It contains, for instance, the famous Papyrus Manuscript of Thotmes II of the first Egyptian dynasty-a thing known to scholars all over the world as the oldest extant specimen of what can be called writing; indeed, one can here see the actual evolution (I am quoting from a work of reference) from the ideographic cuneiform to the phonetic syllabic script. Every time I have read about that manuscript and have happened to be in Orillia (Ontario) or Schenectady (New York), or any such place, I have felt that I would be willing to take a whole trip to England to have five minutes at the British Museum, just five, to look at that papyrus. Yet as soon as I got to London this changed. The railway stations of London have been so arranged that to get to any train for the north or west the traveler must pass the British Museum. The first time I went by it in a taxi I felt quite a thrill. "Inside those walls," I thought to myself, "is the Manuscript of Thotmes II." The next time I actually stopped the taxi. "Is that the British Museum?" I asked the driver. "I think it is something of the sort, sir," he said. I hesitated. "Drive me," I said, "to where I can buy safety-razor blades." After that I was able to drive past the Museum with the quiet assurance of a Londoner, and to take part in dinnertable discussions as to whether the British Museum or the Louvre contains the greater treasures. It is quite easy, anyway. All you have to do is to remember that the "Winged Victory" of Samothrace is in the Louvre and the Papyrus of Thotmes II (or some such document) is in the Museum. The Abbey, I admit, is indeed majestic. I did not intend to miss going into it. But I felt, as so many tourists have, that I wanted to enter it in the proper frame of mind. I never got into the frame of mind; at least not when near the Abbey itself. I have been in exactly that frame of mind when on State Street, Chicago, or on King Street, Toronto, or anywhere three thousand miles away from the Abbey. But by bad luck I never struck both the frame of mind and the Abbey at the same time. But the Londoners, after all, in not seeing their own wonders, are only like the rest of the world. The people who live in Buffalo never go to see Niagara Falls; people in Cleveland don't know which is Mr. Rockefeller's house, and people live and even die in New York without going up to the top of the Woolworth Building. And, anyway, the past is remote and the present is near. I know a cab driver in the city of Quebec whose business in life it is to drive people up to see the Plains of Abraham, but unless they bother him to do it he doesn't show them the spot where Wolfe fell; what he does point out with real zest is the place where the mayor and the city council sat on the wooden platform that they put up for the municipal celebration last summer. But for the ordinary visitor to London the greatest interest of all attaches to the spacious and magnificent Parliament Buildings. The House of Commons is commodiously situated beside the river Thames. The principal features of the House are the large lunch room on the western side and the tea room on the terrace on the eastern. A series of smaller luncheon rooms extends (apparently) all round about the premises, while a commodious bar offers a ready access to the members at all hours of the day. While any members are in the bar a light is kept burning in the tall Clock Tower at one corner of the building, but when the bar is closed the light is turned off by whichever of the Scotch members leaves last. There is a handsome legislative chamber attached to the premises from which-so the antiquarians tell us-the House of Commons took its name. But it is not usual now for the members to sit in the legislative chamber, as the legislation is now all done outside, either at the home of Mr. Lloyd George or at the National Liberal Club, or at one or the other of the newspaper offices. The House, however, is called together at very frequent intervals to give it an opportunity of hearing the latest legislation and allowing the members to indulge in cheers, groans, sighs, votes, and other expressions of vitality. After having cheered as much as is good for them they go back again to the lunch rooms and go on eating till they are needed again. The Parliament Buildings are SO vast that it is not possible to state with certainty what they do, or do not, contain. But it is generally said that somewhere in the building is the House of Lords. When they meet they are said to come together very quietly shortly before the dinner hour, take a glass of dry sherry and a biscuit (they are all abstemious men), reject whatever bills may be before them at the moment, take another dry sherry, and then adjourn for two years. The public are no longer allowed unrestricted access to the Houses of Parliament; its approaches are now strictly guarded by policemen. In order to obtain admission it is necessary now either to (A) communicate in writing with the Speaker of the House, inclosing certificates of naturalization and proof of identity, or, (B) give the policemen five shillings. Method B is the one usually adopted. On great nights, however, when the House of Commons is sitting and is about to do something important, such as ratifying a Home Rule bill, or cheering, or welcoming a new lady member, it is not possible to enter by merely bribing a policeman with five shillings; it takes a pound. The English people complain bitterly of the rich Americans who have in this way corrupted the London public. Before they were corrupted they would do anything for sixpence. No description of London would be complete without a reference, however brief, to the singular salubrity and charm of the London climate. This is seen at its best during the autumn and winter months. The climate of London, and indeed of England generally, is due to the influence of the Gulf Stream. The way it works is this: The Gulf Stream, as it nears the shores of the British Isles and feels the propinquity of Ireland, rises into the air, turns into soup, and comes down on London. At times this soup is thin and is in fact little more than a mist; at other times it has the consistency of a thick potage St.-Germain. London people flatter their atmosphere by calling it a fog; but it is not; it is soup. I But the notion that no sunlight ever gets through and that in the London winter people never see the sun, is a ridiculous error, circulated, no doubt, by the jealousy of foreign nations. have myself seen the sun plainly visible in London, without the aid of glasses, on a November day in broad daylight; and again one night about four o'clock in the afternoon, I saw the sun distinctly appear through the clouds. The whole subject of daylight in the London winter is, however, one which belongs rather to the technic of astronomy than to a paper of description. In practice daylight is but little used. Electric lights are burned all the time in all private houses, buildings, railway stations, and clubs. This practice, which is now universally observed, is called daylight saving. But the distinction between day and night during the London winter is still quite obvious to anyone of an observant mind. It is indicated by various signs such as the striking of clocks, the tolling of bells, the closing of the saloons, and the raising of the taxi rates. Expert Londoners are able to tell the difference between day and night almost as easily |