IN COLDEST ENGLAND
I have again "established my residence" with the police in London. I feel on terms of the most intimate acquaintance with the London police. So many of them have my photograph and are conversant with all the biographical and genealogical details of my life. You have to do it, register at a police station, every time you change your hotel. I have moved so often, I am nervous lest I seem like a German spy. But at the Bow Street Station, the officer in charge just nods genially: "Oh, that's quite all right. Looking for more heat, aren't you? I know. You Americans are all alike."
Have you ever shivered in London in January? Then you don't know what it is to be cold, not even when the thermometer drops to zero and New York's all snowed in but the subway, and the street cleaning department has to spend a million dollars to dig you out of the drifts. Yes, I know about the Gulf Stream. It does pleasantly moderate the outdoor climate so that it is never really winter in England. But the Gulf Stream does not get into their houses. I was a luncheon guest the other day at a residence with a crest on its note-paper. The hostess put on a wrap to pass down the staircase from the drawing-room to the dining-room, and with my bronchitis—all Americans get it in London—I was simply unable to remove my coat at all. This mansion, English ivy-covered, and mildewed with ages of aristocracy, has never had a real fire within its walls. There are
