Sergeant Charley
You can stand on a bridge while scows drift slowly under you, and St. Paul’s sinks into the smoke and darkness, like the dissolving views at a lecture on travel. It is quite proper that the underground railway should be used mostly for advertising purposes; but the most gaudy posters fail to brighten up those dingy tunnels, and no amount of speed can compensate for the time you are away from the world over your head. London is not a place to go under.
There is no reason to be lonely. No one ever knows London, and before you have been there long you are showing Londoners about their own city with the pride of a part owner in its history; for, to an American, the old part of the city is his—as much so as the portraits of his ancestors. The pictures may not be on his walls, but he stands as good a chance of being like their originals as the man who owns the house in which they hang.
Hyde Park Corner
NOWHERE is caste more noticeable than in a London audience. A little board fence divides the ground-floor of a theatre into orchestra stalls and a pit. It would cost you ten shillings less and your social position to sit on the wrong side of this fence. It does not follow that sitting on the right side of it assures your position. But it does give you an uninterrupted view of the stage. No hats are worn, and that alone makes it worth extra charge. There is, in most of the theatres, room for your knees, and in some, additional room for the man who goes out between the acts, and people who arrive after the curtain is up. A London audience is brilliant. Everyone is in evening dress, and the audience is often more entertaining than the play. This is especially true on a first night. At such times the pit is watched most anxiously by the management, as the success of the piece generally depends on their verdict. It has often occurred to me, when I have seen them on a stormy night forming a line on the pavement outside the pit entrance, taking it all seriously enough to stand there for hours before the doors were opened, that by letting them inside the management might improve their spirits, and they in their turn might be more gentle.