The scene was unique. The long Terrace, looking out upon the Thames at the very point of which Wordsworth wrote,
Earth has not anything to show more fair,
was filled with tea tables, at each of which sat a group of prominent London tea-drinkers and their friends. The background, the Perpendicular architecture of Parliament House, is crumbling in places, and I looked quickly away, with a feeling of apology for having viewed it so closely as to see its slight defects.
My host greeted me with an air of unbounded amazement.
“But how did you get down here?” he exclaimed.
“American enterprise,” I responded, but I learned that it had been an extraordinary and reprehensible act on the part of the official who had guided me.
My host greeted me with an air of unbounded amazement.
I was sorry to learn this, but glad that I had persevered to success.
Twelve people were at table, and that Tea is among my fairest London recollections.