“What London do you want to use?” asked Mr. Travers, interestedly. “You know there are many Londons for the entertainment of visitors. We can give you the Baedeker London, or Dickens’s London, or Stevenson’s London, or Bernard Shaw’s London, or Whistler’s London——”
“Or our own W. D. Howells’s London,” I finished, as he paused in his catalogue.
“I think,” I went on, “the London I want is a composite affair, and I shall compile it as I go along. You know Browning says ‘The world is made for each of us,’ and so I think there’s a London made for each of us, and we have only to pick it out from among the myriad others.”
“That’s quite true,” said Mrs. Travers. “You’ll be using, do you see, many bits of those Londons mentioned, but combining them in such a way as to make an individual London all your own.”
The prospect delighted me, and I mentally resolved to build up such a London as never was on land or sea.
“But,” I observed, “aside from an individually theorized London, there must be a practical side that is an inevitable accompaniment. There must be facts as well as opinions. I should be most glad of any hints or advices from experienced and kind-hearted Londoners.”
“Without doubt,” said Mr. Travers, “the question trembling on the tip of your tongue is the one that trembles on the tip of every American tongue that lands on our shores—‘What fee shall I give a cabman?’”
I laughed outright at this, for it was indeed one of my collection of tongue-tipped questions.
He treats you to his opinion of you in choice Billingsgate.