This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

LONDON

MACAULEY'S New Zealander, so I hear, will view the ruins of St. Paul's from London Bridge; but as for me, I prefer that more westerly arch which celebrates Waterloo, there to sniff and immerse myself in the town. The hour is 8:15 post meridien and the time is early summer. I have just rolled down Wellington Street from the Strand, smoking a ninepence Vuelta Abajo, humming an ancient air. One of Simpson's incomparable English dinners—salmon with lobster sauce, a cut from the joint, two vegetables, a cress salad, a slice of old Stilton and a mug of butter—has lost itself, amazed and enchanted, in my interminable recesses. My board is paid at Morley's. I have some thirty-eight dollars to my credit at Brown's, a ticket home is sewn to my lingerie, there is

145