CHAPTER II.
LONDON, AND THINGS PERTAINING.
THE largest city of the world! The most monstrous aggregation of men, women, children; the center of financial, military, mental, and moral power! The controlling city of the world! This is London!
There may be in the effete East larger aggregations of what, by courtesy, may be called humanity, for in those countries the limits of cities are not properly defined, nor is the census taken with any accuracy. But these cities exercise no especial influence upon the world; they control nothing outside of their own countries; they reach out to nothing; they are simply hives.
THE ENGLISHMAN.
Even an American, with all his pride in his country and her magnificent cities, feels somewhat dwarfed to find himself in a city eight times as large as Chicago, four times as large as New York, and his pride in wealth and power, and all that sort of thing, collapses when he realizes the fact that he is where the finances of the world are absolutely controlled; that he is at the very center of the vastest money and military power in the world!