AN OCTOBER ABROAD 145 



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 verifi- 

 cation, on street corner 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 shop- 

 man. Its stores are not nearly so big, and it has 

 no signboards 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 rem- 

 iniscences possible. All its great streets or avenues 

 are called roads, as King's Eoad, City Road, Edge- 



