London Streets

I LIVED in London. I did not merely pass through it on my way elsewhere, stopping for two or three days at a hotel while I drove about the vast den of lions; nor was I content with passing a longer time in the same way. After a week or so of hotel life and sight-seeing, I sought diligently, and found not easily, lodgings in which I established myself as if I had been a bachelor born within the sound of Big Ben. Hence I made excursions on foot or by rail, but usually by both ways of travel, into the neighboring country, and chiefly into that which lies around

the upper waters of the Thames. Into the great city itself, however, I made daily excursions; for so the walks by which I explored the various regions, far and near, of that thickly peopled region of bricks and stones might well be called. I set out sometimes with an end to my journey clearly in mind, but oftenest without one, wandering on over the vast distances, watching the people that I met, and scanning the houses and them that looked from the windows. But I never got to the end of London unless I took a steam-engine into service. Cabs and omnibuses were of no avail. I used them, but generally I walked, following no guide but my curiosity.

I never felt so lonely as I did in these solitary rambles in London, — never so much cut off from my family and my home, I may almost say from humankind. In mid-ocean I did not feel so far removed from living contact with the world. Within these boundless stretches of streets, and of houses so same, and yet each with a physiognomy of its own, like the same number of men and women, —and I came to look at them as if they were human, and in the poor parts, which are of astonishing extent, where they stand crowded together as far every way as the eye can reach, to pity them for the gloomy life they led there, with the sweat and dirt oozing from their sad faces, — within these precincts, made oppressive, if not melancholy, by the apparently endless repetition of units, it seemed to me farther than I could conceive, not only to where I had come from, but to any other place out of my range of vision. I could not take in even London; and what was out of London was beyond beyond.

After I had walked about it enough to have in my mind a loose, exaggerated apprehension of distance, like that we have in childhood, and was yet not so much at home in the place as to become familiar with it and to lose its impression of strangeness, the thought of its vastness became vague and unmeaning, like that of astronomical distances, which are so far beyond apprehension that a change in them by the addition or subtraction of a million of miles or so is of no significance. And the feeling that the rest of the world was very far removed from me transferred itself afterward to England, with some variation. England began to seem to me the one place that I knew upon all the earth: out of England was out of the world. What we call “ America,” although I had come from there in ten days, and although my eyes hungered for the sight of faces and my ears thirsted for the sound of voices there, took on a nebulous shape and substance not much more cognizable than any other inchoate body within or without the solar system; and I began to understand the long indifference, and the ignorance, indifferenceborn, of Englishmen to the country which lay beyond the horizon edge of the ocean.

There is little architectural beauty in London, besides that wondrous beauty of the nave of the great Abbey church. Externally, even that venerable and most interesting structure is so marred by Wren’s towers that the feeling which it excites is one of constant regret. Within, a very considerable part of it is defaced with ugly monuments, chiefly to titled nobodies; and the more insignificant the body and the grander the title, the more pretentious and ugly the monument. It is offensive to see the statues of great men jostled by such a crowd of vulgar marbles. St. Paul’s, outside and inside, is the ugliest building of any pretension that I ever saw. A large inclosed space is always impressive; and the effect thus produced is all of which St. Paul’s can boast. Its forms are without beauty, its lines without meaning; its round windows are ridiculous. Its outside is not only ugly in form, a huge piece of frivolity, but its discoloration by the black deposit from the London atmosphere, and the after-peeling-off of this in patches, give it a most unpleasant look, like that of a great black mangy dog.

The public buildings in the City, the Bank and the Mansion House and the Post-Office, and so forth, have the beauty of fitness; for they look just like what they are,— the creations, the abode, and the stronghold of British Philistinism; rich, substantial, tasteless, and oppressively respectable. The new Houses of Parliament present a succession of faint perpendicular lines in stone ; even distance cannot make them imposing. Only the Victoria tower, whence Big Ben utters, four times hourly, his grand, sweet voice, has beauty for the eye as well as for the ear. The parish churches are mostly by Wren, or in his style, and are ugly with all the ugliness possible to a perversion of the forms of classic architecture.

My search for lodgings, in which I had not even the help of advice, took me over no small part of London, and into many London houses of the middling order. It extended from Covent Garden to South Kensington, and from Euston Square to the Thames, and even across it; for I was led off into Surrey by advertisements of the locality, of which I knew nothing. As to the lodgings that I saw, they had for the most part a tendency towards the suicide of the lodgers; so gloomy were they, so dingy, so stuffy, and so comfortless. On inquiry as to what rooms there were to let, I was generally told that there was “ the dron-room tloor; ” and when I replied that I did n't want a whole floor, but a room or two, I was also generally told that there was a room to let “ at the top o’ the aouse. ’ ’ I found that these rooms were literally at the top of the house. In those which I looked at I found an iron bedstead with a bulgy bed, the stuffiness of which I smelt as soon as the door was open, and upon which was a dingy brown coverlet drawn over the pillow. A small wash stand with small ewer and basin, a chest of drawers, a looking-glass, and one or two not very robust chairs completed the furniture of the apartment, which always looked out upon the windows of like apartments, and the roofs above and the chimneys around them. For these rooms the price demanded was almost invariably “ a paound a week.” In Surrey and some other places it was somewhat less, — from fifteen to eighteen shillings. Bath-rooms were unknown, but “the servant would bring me a can of hot water in the morning.”

I spent the greater part of four days in this search, not altogether unwillingly, because of the places into which it took me and the people with whom it brought me into contact. With some of these places I seemed to myself not unacquainted, so familiar was I with their names and their locality. This was particularly the case with the smaller streets around the lower end of St. James’s Park. The houses in these, — old-fashioned and yet not old enough to be venerable or even antiquated, — with their plain, sombre brick fronts, the look of character and respectability which lingered about them, although they had long been deserted as the dwelling-places of people of condition, and the elaborate iron-work on the steps and before the areas of many of them, in which I noticed large conical iron cups, set at an angle, which, strangely never mentioned by any writer that I remember, I saw at once were huge extinguishers into which the link-boys thrust their links,—all these seemed to me like respectable, decorous old friends of my family who had been waiting to see me, and who now looked at me with serious and yet not unkindly eyes.

The newer part of London, near South Kensington, and by Hyde Park Gate and Prince’s Gate, did not interest me so much externally; although some of the houses were made delightful to me by friends who had really been waiting to give me welcome. The houses here are very handsome. The talk that I have heard about houses in Fifth Avenue leads me to say that there are hundreds, almost thousands, of houses in the best parts of London — around Hyde Park, on Carlton Terrace, and in other like places — which are far finer, much more noble, as Pepys would have said, than any that are to be found in New York, in Boston, or in Philadelphia. I except some of the old houses in Philadelphia, — those built in the beginning of this century, in which, although there is little show of gilding, color, and French polish, there is that far higher beauty in domestic architecture which is given by ample and well-ordered space. I was in many of these houses in Mayfair; in not a few into which I was not invited; for if I passed a house which I saw was undergoing repairs, and the family was absent, I entered, and inquiring for the person in charge, I was generally able to go through it at the cost of a shilling or half a crown to my attendant. Sometimes houses were thrown open to workmen, and these I always went through unquestioned. The difference between houses of this class and those which may be regarded as of a corresponding class in New York is that the former, while less showy than the latter, are more spacious, and have more of the dignity which accompanies large and well-proportioned size. The entrances, the passage-ways, and the staircases are very much larger; the halls in some are large enough to admit of support with pillars. The drawing-rooms are spacious and well-proportioned, and are not directly accessible to the front door. Both a drawing-room and a parlor are common in these houses, and two drawing-rooms and a parlor are not rare. But what is known in New York as an English basement house must he so called because there are none such in England. I did not see one in London, or in Liverpool, or in Birmingham, or in Oxford, or in any other English town that I visited. The notion also that rows of houses all alike are not found in England is altogether wrong. In the new part of London such rows, and of very handsome houses, are common; while in the new parts of smaller towns the houses built for people of moderate means stand in rows of from a dozen to two dozen, as like each other as one brick is like another. The pretense, and the consequent misrepresentation, of some British travelers on this score is like much more of their pretension, simply absurd. There is, however, a monotonous effect given to a long row of houses in New York by the hideous device known as a “high stoop,” which is much more oppressive than that which could be produced by the indefinite repetition of any house that I saw in London. This and the absence of the mellowing, toning effect of the English atmosphere makes a row of “brown stone fronts” in New York the most unattractive and the most aggressively unhome-like-looking structures that the mind of man ever conceived.

Two simple contrivances are found in almost all moderately fine London houses which might be adopted with great advantage elsewhere. The first is a handsome square lantern, which is set in the wall over the street - door, and which lights from one side the vestibule and from the other the porch and steps. The comfort of this lighting is very great, as every one accustomed to our dark steps and porches sees immediately. The other is two bells, one marked “ visitors ” and the other “ servants ; ” the convenience of which in the daily working of a household need not be told to any housekeeper. And much more numerous as servants are in London (and as much better as they are more numerous) than here, there is more pains taken there to save their labor and their steps than is taken by us. Over the street-door bell-pulls, or over the letterboxes, of the best houses, it is common to see on bronze plates, “ Please do not ring unless an answer is required.” These little precautions tend much to the common comfort of master and mistress, and of servants.

There is a remarkable absence of show and pretension in the shops of London. Even in Regent Street and New Bond Street and St. James’s Street there is little display, and almost nothing is done merely to catch the eye. And even in these quarters the shops are comparatively small. You may find the most splendid jewels, the richest fabrics, and treasures of art and of literature in little places that would provoke the scorn of the smallest dealer in Broadway. The publishers make no show at all. The greatest of them are to be found in unpretending quarters, with little display of their literary goods, which are stored elsewhere. The principals are in their counting-rooms or their parlors up-stairs, and quite inaccessible, except when they choose to see those who send up their names. The book-sellers are hardly more expansive. I found that, with one or two exceptions, the men from whom I had received, when I was a book-buyer, catalogues of books of great rarity and price were in small, unpretending shops which in New York would attract no attention. But a glance at their shelves was provocative of a woful sense of impecuniosity; and I found them intelligent, and with a notable knowledge of their business and of the literary world, and also of the why and the wherefore of the value of their books. They were not all Willium Pickerings ; still they were generally men of whom Pickering was in some degree the type and the model.

One day, as I turned the corner of a little street not far from Covent Garden, my eye and my admiration were attracted by a pair of little old yellow and blue vases which stood in a window among some other articles of the same sort, and I wished to inquire the price. The entrance to the shop or sales-room was in the cross-street, and proved to be merely the somewhat imposing door of a large, old-fashioned dwelling-house.

I rang the bell; which seemed to be rather an odd way of getting into a place where articles were exposed to public sale. The door was opened. I ventured to say that I wished to know the price of a pair of vases in the window, speaking, I am sure, with some shyness and hesitation; for I felt rather as if I were intruding upon household privacy. This feeling was not diminished by the sequel. First, a stout, middle-aged man appeared descending the stairs. He was in a dressing-gown and slippers, with a smoking-cap on his head. He was closely followed by a middle-aged woman, plainly his wife, also stout, and clad in dingy garments of heterogeneous fashion. I was received with great distinction, almost with ceremony ; and while I was repeating my simple wish to know the price of those vases, a young woman, doubtless the daughter of the respectable persons before me, descended the stairs, and taking up a position in the rear, joined her parents in looking at me. After her came a blowsy little Scotch terrier, who trotted to the front of the group, and stood, with nervous nostrils, looking up into my face through the chinks in his soft shock of hair. The servant who opened the door withdrew slowly and by stages, facing about like the rear-guard of a retreating army; and thus she, for a while, was added to the group. And all this merely because I wished to know the price of a pair of vases, — vases put in the window to catch the eye of the passer-by. I was marshaled into the show-room. I walked across it at the head of the party, keeping my countenance and pretending, impostor that I was, to take the whole performance as a matter of course, when in fact I felt as if I were making believe that I was a Highland chief with his tail on. I pointed out the pottery, whereupon my host — for such I felt he was — bowed, and blandly smiling said, “Hah! yessur, yessur; most helegant vawses; quite rococo, indeed; hin the Rennysawnce style ; hand only sixty guineas.” The stout wife repeated, “Quite hin the Rennysawnce style.” The daughter did not speak, but I saw that she longed to do so; and if the terrier could have barked Rennysawnce I am sure he would, and perhaps would have pronounced it after another fashion, for he seemed by far the most intelligent of the party. I thanked my host, and said I would think about it,— another base imposture on my part, for I could not afford to give sixty guineas for a couple of little blue and yellow pots. But what was I to do when a man turned out the guard as if I were officer of the day making grand rounds, and all just because I wished to know the price of a pair of vases? I was about to withdraw promptly, feeling very much ashamed of myself; but I was not allowed to do so. I was asked to look at the rest of the stock, and with such heartiness of manner that I saw plainly that, altogether apart from the question of present purchase, they would all like to have me examine what they had for sale. I made the round of two rooms, escorted by the family; and after seeing many beautiful things, I bade goodmorning to my entertainers, who courteously attended me to the door in a body, and stood there until I turned the corner; and all because I wished to inquire the price of a pair of vases.

I did not have quite such a formidable reception at any other of the many little shops which I entered to buy, or to make inquiries; but this instance is indicative of the style which I found in vogue. On the first occasion or two when I did not buy, I felt quite ashamed of myself for putting such very polite people to so much trouble; but I soon got used to the fashion, and liked it. For indeed it is pleasanter than that carriage of the salesman or the saleswoman (who advertises herself as a “ saleslady ”) which seems to say, “ I would die on the spot, or ruin my employer, rather than show you the least deference, or take any trouble to please you.” I was struck by the readiness to sell to me, a perfect stranger and chance passer-by, and to send home my purchases without even asking payment. These good people could not have been readier to supply my wants if I had been an old customer. I remember buying an umbrella in Regent Street, and ordering my name to be engraved upon the handle. It was on my second day in London. I had given my address, but I expected to stop at the shop on my return, look at the engraving, and pay for the whole, and have it sent home. This I did not do, wandering back by another way. On reaching my hotel, there I found my umbrella, with the engraving nicely done, but not even a bill. The next morning I went and paid for it, and thanked the shop-keeper for sending it to me, a perfect stranger, and jestingly added, “ How did you know I should come back again?” The answer, with a smiling shake of the head, was, “ Oh, sir, we don’t lose much money in that way.” There was always a readiness to “ book ” anything I liked, but seemed reluctant to buy. Once, when the keeper of an old curiosity shop, a woman, earnestly suggested that she should send me home a magnificent pair of fire-dogs, which I lingered over in admiration, the dog part being reduced copies in bronze of Michael Angelo’s Day and Night on the Tomb of the Medici, and, the price being eighty guineas, I had replied rather curtly, “ Thanks, but I can’t afford it; I’ve no money,” the answer was, immediately, “ Oh, sir, we’d book it for you with pleasure.” This readiness was but one mode of the manifestation of a general confidence which seemed to me remarkable, and the existence of which was a most pleasing social trait. If I had been a resident of London, and these good people had known but my name, the matter would have had a different aspect; but in every case it was my first visit to the shop. And when bills do come in with goods, or afterwards, they are sent “with the compliments” of Messrs. So-and-So, and with a request for further orders and the honor of your recommendation. It you express a wish to examine anything, it is sent to you for approval with compliments. If it is desirable that you should inspect anything which is in making for you, you have a respectful note asking you to do Messrs. So-and-So the favor of calling at your convenience; and this although your order may be only a matter of a pound or two, and Messrs. Soand-So may be able to “buy you” a thousand times over, and know it. If this is a result or a necessary accompaniment of aristocratic institutions, they certainly in one respect have a wholesome and elevating influence.

London shop-streets are in a great measure free from the abominable defacement of what we now call signs. Even in the Strand, in Oxford Street, and in Edgeware Road, where the shops are second-rate, there are few such great, glaring, gilded boards as affront the eye in every trading quarter of New York. There are signs, but they are comparatively few and small and inoffensive; and of flag-staffs and transparencies and other rag-fair appurtenances, there are none. This is one characteristic of London streets that makes walking through them a pleasant and a soothing process. And this unmarring modesty of outward show involves no inconvenience. I never had the least difficulty in finding any shop to which I wished to go, but once; and in that case the fault was my own. But there is one peculiarity of London streets which is somewhat embarrassing to a stranger: they are not, the long ones at least, numbered regularly from end to end, with the odd numbers on one side and the even on the other, but very irregularly and in sections; the sections being those parts of the street which run through certain quarters; and the same street has different names in different quarters. The quarter in which a house or shop stands is generally named, as well as the street itself. This produces those double designations which strike us in London addresses; for example, “Bedford Street, Covent-Garden; ” “Wellington Street, Strand; ” and even “ Bond Street, Regent Street.” The complication makes no difficulty when once you are used to it; and it has a picturesqueness and individuality which seemed to me far preferable to the rightangled and numerical street arrangement which rules off a city in square blocks, and numbers the houses in one block 100, those in the next 200, and so on. It is difficult to attach any idea of personal possession or peculiarity to such an address as No. 1347 Chestnut Street, or No. 100 West Fifty-First Street. How much more character there is in the Black Swan without Temple Bar, the Queen’s Head against St. Dunstan’s Church, the Golden Ball in St. Paul’s Churchyard, or the Kings Arms in Little Britain!

What we call signs, nowadays, are really not signs, but quite the contrary. A sign is a symbol, — a thing of one kind which represents or indicates something of another kind, or which is adopted as a designation for a particular place or person. Indeed, a sign is not a description in words, but, as Bardolph might say, a sign is — something — which — whereby — we make a sign of something. Thus we read in old books of such addresses as those mentioned above, and of the sign of the Bible, or of the Crown, or of the Rising Sun, or of the Cock, or of the Eagle, or of the Red Lion, or what not. These were really signs, and they came into use to designate shops or inns in times when few people could read. A board on which is written the name of the person over whose door it is, with a description of his business and the number of the house, is not properly a sign; although when these descriptions took the place of the old signs the name of the latter was naturally transferred to the former.

A few of the old sort of signs remain in London, and in some instances the name of an old sign remains as the designation of the house. One of these is the famous hostelry, The Cock, in Fleet Street, hard by Temple Bar. But lately Temple Bar has been removed from Fleet Street, and I believe the Cock itself has come down from the old perch, and crows no more. I took my luncheon there one day. It was a low, dark room, with a sanded floor. There were boxes, with little dingy green curtains along the top; the seats were as comfortable as those of a pew in an old New England meeting-house. It was probably in the same condition when Dr. Johnson, who lived not far off, took his dinner there.

I observed that the score was still kept with chalk. The waiters were very sad and solemn. But for their black swallow-tailed coats and neckties that had once been white, you might have supposed them the very waiters that had just heard the news of the death of Queen Anne. The spirit of British Philistinism was concentrated in the place. The beef and the beer were indeed supremely good; but notwithstanding this and the interest attaching to the place, my luncheon was a rather doleful and depressing performance. What is to be done without Temple Bar across Fleet Street who shall say? I had thought that this obstruction, architecturally not very admirable, had its title to respect in some close connection with the British constitution, which is of about the same age; and this notion was not unsettled when I saw the props and makeshifts by which it was kept from falling into disastrous ruin. Its removal shows how, at the last moment, the English mind can rise to the emergency of a great reform; and its preservation in one of the parks shows equally that respectful consideration for the memory of the past which is one of the estimable and lovable traits of the national character.

Nothing is more remarkable in London than the suddenness with which you may pass from a street thronged and bustling with the business of the modern world into quiet and silence and verdure and venerable memories. Out of Fleet Street you go through a gate-way that you would hardly notice, and a narrow, dim passage which promises nothing, into the Temple Gardens, where, hearing no sound but that of leaves rustling lazily and a fountain plashing drowsily, you may walk, on such a beautiful day as that on which I walked there, and muse amid a sweet stillness that could not be more undisturbed if you were in the rural heart of England. If you know one of the resident benchers or barristers, and choose to visit him, you will find his name painted in small black letters at the lintel of a door; and you will go up a rude staircase with a heavy beam handrail that will remind you of the stairs at Harvard and Yale in the halls that are the most old-fashioned and the rudest. You will find your friend’s card upon the outside of a plain, dingy deal door; but that passed, you are likely to find yourself in chambers that are the perfection of unpretending luxury and comfort; and your friend’s talk and the wine that he will offer you are likely to be such that you would gladly sit the whole day enjoying both, quite oblivious of London, the hum of which steals so lightly to your ears in the pauses that it seems less a thing of time present than a dim memory.

Stretching down to the Thames for half a mile below Charing Cross are little streets with narrow entrances which suddenly widen, and on either side of which are old houses now mostly let out in lodgings. They lead to gardens by the river-side; and there, too, you may walk or sit in silence, while just behind you roars the Strand. These streets bear the names of great families whose city residences were built there when the Strand was a suburban road by the riverside. These great houses have disappeared, most of them long ago; but the last of them, Northumberland House, was taken down quite lately. Two years ago its dilapidated basement and foundations still stood just beyond Trafalgar Square, the last ragged remnant of feudal magnificence in London.

From the upper end of Trafalgar Square, out of which issues Pall Mall, the street of the great clubs, and hard by which are the public offices of Downing Street, it is not five minutes’ walk to St. James’s Park, with its long stretches of green turf, its great trees and its water, where wild fowl dive and flit into hiding. Here Dorimants and Bellairs might make appointments, and keep them unobserved, just as they did in the days of Charles II. and of Etherege; although, indeed, prying eyes might look down from the gardens of the noble houses on Carlton Terrace, built in the reign of a king who had all of Charles’s vices without any of his wit. Beyond St. James’s, Green Park stretches along the unbuilt side of Piccadilly to Hyde Park, which is a wilderness of arboreal beauty, and where, if you prefer silence and solitude to the throng and display of Rotten Row, you may sit under the branches of great trees, and fancy yourself in the Forest of Arden, although cabs and omnibuses are dashing along within half a mile of you. London seems bound together less by its close-built streets than by its open spaces.

The London omnibus, or ’bus as it is universally called, is a much less pretentious vehicle than that which plies up and down Broadway and the Fifth Avenue; and in some respects it is much less comfortable. It is small, sober in color, and in form a mere ugly square box on wheels. It is in constant use as an advertising van. Its windows are immovable. At the upper end there is no window or aperture at all, nor is there any in the roof; the only means of ventilation being the window through which von see the conductor standing upon the step, where, like the head-waiter at the Cock, he keeps his score, or sometimes, at least, in chalk. On a muggy day one of these air - tight London ’buses, filled with the Queen’s liege subjects, not of the upper classes (who rarely or never enter one), is not pervaded with the odors of Ceylon, or with the freshness of the breezes on the top of Mount Washington. If you use an omnibus, ride upon the outside; and this is something to do; for you have not seen London streets unless you have looked down upon them from the top of an omnibus.

There is one comfort in the London ’bus which distinguishes it and all other public vehicles in England from those in the United States. They are not overcrowded. No one is permitted to enter a full ’bus or tramway car and stand up in it to the annoyance of other persons. Neither in London nor in any other part of England did I see this offense against good manners committed even once. If an omnibus were full, the conductor took up no more passengers. And yet the street travel in London is of course much greater than it is in New York, where omnibus proprietors and the managers of street railways, practicing for their profit upon the supineness of one part of the public and the dull perceptions and rude manners of another part, are permitted to carry people packed so closely together that they are pressed into a semblance of sameness, like the cells of wax in a bee-hive. Entering a car once on a tramway in Birkenhead, near Liverpool, I found every seat occupied. I purposely stood up to see what would come of it. I had found all sorts of public servants, guards on railways, beadles in churches, and vergers in cathedrals, very considerate and accommodating; but I had not stood a moment when the conductor of this car came to me, and said, with that mixture oE deference and firmness which I have mentioned before, “ Beg pardon, sir, but you can’t stand here.” I yielded, of course, immediately, and went out; but stopped, again purposely, upon the platform. “ Beg pardon, sir,” immediately said my conductor, “ but you know no one is allowed to stand upon the platform. Please go on top; plenty of room there.” And thither I went, where I had intended to go from the first.

Everything in the England of to-day is bound by visible links to the England of the past. This is manifest even on the railways, as I have before remarked; and the very omnibuses in London preserve these signs of the continuity of English national, municipal, and social life. London, from the time when it was a little walled city, has always had suburbs lying within a mile or two of the compact town, and these suburbs it has gradually absorbed; being in this respect like, but only in a certain degree, other great cities in other countries. No other great city lias had so many suburban villages around it. But though London has taken them to itself, it has not destroyed them; they preserve their names, and still to a certain degree their individual existence. Thus Charing Cross, Kensington, Paddington, Putney, Hackney, Bayswater, Bompton, etc., more or less new quarters of metropolitan London (not the city proper), were once villages and parishes, separated from the city by green fields. Of this fact the London omnibus is a daily witness and record. It is not quite a mere public vehicle running through streets to take up chance passengers, but is still a sort of stagecoach plying between stage and stage, stopping regularly at each to take up passengers who assemble there. The fares are determined by this custom. They are not so much for the whole distance run by the ’bus, or for any part of it, but twopence from one stage to another, or threepence for a longer trip. Chance passengers are of course taken up and set down at any point; but much the greater number are taken up at these distinct stages, and leave the ’bus at some one of them. The various stages are set forth, with their proper fares, on a board at the upper end of the vehicle.

The practice in the United States has been just the reverse of this, and deliberately so. For example, omnibuses began to run in New York just as they did in Loudon, between the centre of trade and suburbs which had become attached to the city. Greenwich and Chelsea were suburban villages, to the first of which people fled from New York, when the city was visited by yellow fever, some fifty and odd years ago. Fifteen or twenty years afterwards the first line of omnibuses was set up to ply between Wall Street and Greenwich, and “Greenwich ” was painted on the ’bus, as Charing Cross, or Hammersmith, or The Elephant and Castle, is upon a ’bus in London. But what trace of Greenwich is there now in New York? The name is never seen nor heard, and few New York people know that there ever was such a village at a place on the west side, not quite half-way from the Battery to Central Park. So Williamsburgh, a considerable town, has been united to Brooklyn within the last twenty-five years; but its old name is rapidly fading away before the glories of its new appellation, “ Brooklyn East District, ’ ’ for which its real name has been changed, with conspicuous loss of convenience, individuality, and dignity. Names of streets are changed in the most ruthless manner. We have in New York not only the destruction of history long ago in the change of Queen Street into Pearl Street, and the late snobbish and silly change of Thompson Street to South Fifth Avenue, but within a year or two Amity Street has been made into Third Street; and there has been an attempt to wipe away the name of Lord Chatham from the thoroughfare to which it was given in honor of his protest against the oppression of the American colonies.

This foolish and vulgar fashion cannot rightly be called “ American.” It belongs chiefly to New York, the most characterless place in every respect that is known to me; but I am unacquainted with any of its Western imitations. In Boston they do not thus blot out all memories of the past, nor at the South. I have a friend in Annapolis who lives in Duke of Gloucester Street; and there is comfort in the date of her letters. But the New York numerical system will probably prevail until States and counties and cities are subjected to it, — why not? — and we shall have letters addressed to No. 243⅛ West 1279th Street, City Seven, County TwentyThree, State Five. A lovely arrangement this will be, when it takes place. But it is merely a consistent carrying out of the plan already adopted. What associations of home or of happiness can there be with a number? With what face can a man speak of the time when he lived in dear old One Hundred and Seventy'-Fifth Street? For my part, I would rather than this go back to the old addresses of London, and live over against the sign of the Black-Boy and Stomach-Ache in Little Britain. London does not retain these old names and things in their old form and force; but she does not wipe them out as with a wet sponge, and begin the world anew every generation. As to finding one’s way about in London, there is no difficulty in it whatever; at least I had none, although I was a perfect stranger, and generally — because I preferred to be so — without a guide.

I saw no beggars in London streets. Even in the poorest quarters, where, but for the half - drunken look of half the people, it seemed to me that the very tap-rooms must have shut up for want of custom, and where I felt as if I were five miles from decency, so long had I walked without seeing a clean shirt upon a mail or a clean face upon a woman, I found no beggars. This was not peculiar to London. In all England, town and country, I was begged of but once, and that was in effect for food, not money. Having at home every day, and many times a day, proof that there is nothing about me to forbid the asking of alms, I was soon struck by this absolute absence of beggars, and I threw myself in the way of solicitation, but with no success. I thought once that I should succeed with a poor woman who had a few faded little nosegays for sale, and who importuned me to buy. I said no, that I could do nothing with her flowers, but spoke kindly. She entreated me to buy, and followed me out of Bond Street into a little cross-street, holding out her sickly little bouquets, which I thought might be like the wan, feeble children she had left at home. I still shook my head, but did not tell her to go away, and I am sure must have looked the compassion that I felt. I meant to buy a nosegay, but I thought, Surely this woman will ask me to give her something. But no; she even followed me to the very door of the house where I was going, thrusting the flowers almost into my face, and saying, “ Only sixpence, sir; please buy one: ” but she did not beg. I remained obdurate in vain, until the door opened, and then I took her nosegay, and put something into her hand which, little as it was, brought joy into her face, and the door closed upon her looking on her palm and making a half - dazed courtesy .

It was in the Strand, about nine o’clock in the evening, that I met my only beggar. As I walked leisurely through that thronged thoroughfare, suddenly I was conscious of a woman’s presence, and a woman’s voice asking, " Please, sir, would you give me tuppence to buy one of those pork pies in that shop? I 'm so hungry.” I paused. The face that was looking up into mine with entreaty in the eyes was that of a young woman about twenty years old, not at all pretty, but with that coarse comeliness of face and figure which is not uncommon among lowly born Englishwomen. Her dress was neat and comfortable, but not at all smart. As I looked at her doubtingly, she said, “ You think I want it for drink; but indeed, indeed, I don’t, sir. You need n’t give me the tuppence; you may come and buy the pie yourself, sir, and see me eat it, if you will.” She pointed across the street to a little shop where pastry and other viands were in the window. I had no doubt that her object in walking the Strand at that hour in the evening was not to beg for pork pies, but I decided to do as she suggested. We crossed the street and entered the shop. It was a very small place, humble and rude; much more so than I expected to find it from the look of the window. However, it seemed perfectly quiet and respectable,—merely a tiny eating-house that lived by the chance custom of the poorest wayfarers along the Strand. Behind the little counter stood a woman so fat that she looked like a huge pork pie in petticoats. I said to the girl, “Never mind the pie; call for what you like.” “May I” she cried, her eyes brightening wide with pleasure; and then, turning to the little counter she said, with a largeness of manner and an intensity of satisfaction the sight of which was worth a Cincin-

nati of pork - pies, “ Stewed tripe and potatoes!” We sat down in a little pen upon deal seats and at a deal board that had once been painted, but, I think, never washed. Stewed tripe was manifestly a standing dish; for we had hardly taken our seats when a plate, a soup plate, of it came up through a sort of trap-door just outside our pen, with two large potatoes on a smaller plate. My companion made a hasty plunge outside, and set them smilingly upon the table. The principal dish looked like a bucket of bill-sticker’s paste, into which a piece of a bill had fallen, as sometimes happens, and become thoroughly soaked. It was steaming hot, and gave out a faint, sickening smell, in which I detected an element that reminded me of an occasion when, upon the recommendation of a professed good liver, I vainly tried to eat a little tripe broiled after some wonderful fashion. The girl seized upon the potatoes ; and although they were so hot that she plainly could not touch them without pain, she squeezed them out of their skins into the pasty fluid in which the tripe was wallowing. At once she began to eat the grumous mess, and ate so hastily, almost voraciously, that she burnt her mouth. I told her not to eat. so fast, but to take her time, and let the stuff cool. “ But I’m so hungry,” was her reply. She abated but little of her eagerness, and soon finished her portion to the last morsel and the last drop. Upon my invitation she ate some trifle more; but when I asked her if she would have some beer, to my surprise she said no, adding, “They’ve no tap here.” This is the case in many eating-houses in London, of the better as well as of the lower order. At one where, early in my London experience, I had ordered and was eating a particularly juicy, high-flavored chop, I was asked if I would like anything to drink, and ordering a pint of half-and-half, I was surprised at the waiter’s saying, “ Please to give me the money.” To my look of inquiry, he replied, “ We’ve no license, sir, and we send out.” This just reverses the practice in New York, where the keeper of a bar will add a skeleton restaurant and two beds to his establishment for the purpose of making sure his license to sell beer and spirits. I suppose that there are not half a dozen restaurants in New York where ale and beer may not be had for the asking.

When the girl had stayed her hunger, I led her to talk, to which she seemed not at all unwilling. She proved to be one of those simple, good-natured, common-sensible, but not quick or clever, women who abound in England. She told me a story, — with a man in it, of course. When was a woman’s story without one? A man’s story sometimes, although rarely, may have no woman in it; but a woman’s without a man,— never. This one had no incident, no peculiarity, which gave it the slightest interest. It was the baldest possible narration of fact. She had been at service, and her child was born about four months ago; that was all. But there was also an entire absence of the pretensions and the complaints common in such cases; universal in the United States, but more rarely heard in England, I believe, where there is less sham upon all subjects. In this case, at least, there was not a word of reproach, and no talk of betrayal or of ruin. On the contrary, she said frankly, “ I ’ve no call to find any fault with him.” I respected the girl for this candor. “ But,” she added, “ I did think he need n’t have run away just before my baby was going to be born. The poor little kid wouldn’t have done him any harm.” I more than heartily agreed with her here, when I found that she had neither seen the father of her child nor heard from him for nearly six months. But I could not but respect her simplicity, her uncomplaining endurance, and her cheerfulness; for she spoke hopefully, and with such slight but loving reference to her baby that I was sure that when it left her breast she would hunger before it did. To be sure, she had health and strength and youth and courage, and some humble friends who did not cast her off; but for all that that selfish and cowardly fellow knew, she might have been dead, or worse, lying ill and starving with his child on straw in a garret. Her feeling toward him seemed to be that of mild contempt, because he had lacked the manliness to face the consequences of his own conduct. She made no claim upon him whatever. From what I saw and heard I came to the conclusion that an unmarried mother is not in general treated so cruelly by her friends among the lower classes in England as in corresponding circumstances she is with us. As I made a slight contribution to the comfort of the little one, she begged me to go home with her and “ see the little kid,” with regard to whose prettiness she gave me very confident assurances. But although it was stipulated on her part that my proposed visit was to be one of domiciliary inspection merely, to this invitation I did not seriously incline. We went out into the glaring, gas-lit, bustling Strand. She shook hands with me in a hearty way, and with no profusion of thanks from her we parted. I turned after I had walked a few steps, and saw her standing still amid the hurrying throng, looking earnestly after me. I nodded to her, went on my way, and saw her no more.

I observed, as she was talking with me, that she did not maltreat her h's. I found other instances of a like correctness of speech among people of her low condition of life in England; but they are very rare; rarest of all in London. The others that I met with were, if I remember rightly, chiefly in Kent and in Lancashire.

But here I must stop, and leave my tale of London streets half told.

Richard Grant White.