MELLOW ENGLAND. 165 



but saw through the rifts in the smoke only a waste 

 literally a waste of red tiles and chimney pots. 

 The confusion and desolation were complete. 



But I finally mastered the city, in a measure, by 

 the aid of a shilling map which I carried with me 

 wherever I went, and upon which when I was lost I 

 would hunt myself up, thus making in the end a very 

 suggestive and entertaining map. Indeed every inch 

 of this piece of colored paper is alive to me. If I did 

 not make the map itself, I at least verified it, which 

 is nearly as good, and the verification, on street cor- 

 ner by day, and under lamp or by shop window at 

 night, was often a matter of so much concern that I 

 doubt if the original surveyor himself put more heart 

 into certain parts of his work than I did in the proof 

 of them. 



London has less metropolitan splendor than New 

 York, and less of the full-blown pride of the shopman. 

 Its stores are not nearly so big, and it has no sign- 

 boards that contain over one thousand feet of lumber, 

 neither did I see any names painted on the gable ends 

 of the buildings that the man in the moon could read 

 without his opera-glass. I went out one day to look 

 up one of the great publishing houses, and passed it 

 and repassed it several times trying to find the sign. 

 Finally, having made sure of the building, I found the 

 name of the firm cut into the door jamb. 



London seems to have been built and peopled by 

 countrymen, who have preserved all the rural remi- 

 niscences possible. All its great streets or avenues 



