From the cathedral I took a taxi, and bustling down Victoria Street, past the Houses of Parliament and into the Strand, came eventually to St. Paul’s. Although it was only four o’clock, this huge structure was growing dusky, and the tombs of Wellington and Marlborough were already dim. The organist allowed me to sit in the choir stalls with the choristers--a company of boys who entered, after a time, headed by deacons and sub-deacons and possibly a canon. A solitary circle of electric bulbs flamed gloomily overhead. By the light of this we were able to make out the liturgy covering this service--the psalms and prayers which swept sonorously through the building. As in the Roman Catholic Cathedral, I was impressed with the darkness and space and also, though not so much for some reason (temperamental inclination perhaps), with the futility of the procedure. There are some eight million people in London, but there were only twenty-five or thirty here, and I was told that this service was never much more popular. On occasions the church is full enough--full to overflowing--but not at this time of day. The best that I could say for it was that it had a lovely, artistic import which ought to be encouraged; and no doubt it is so viewed by those in authority. As a spectacle seen from the Thames or other sections of the city, the dome of St. Paul’s is impressive, and as an example of English architecture it is dignified--though in my judgment not to be compared with either Canterbury or Salisbury. But the interesting company of noble dead, the fact that the public now looks upon it as a national mausoleum and that it is a monument to the genius of Christopher Wren, makes it worth while. Compared with other cathedrals I saw, its chief charm was its individuality. In actual beauty it is greatly surpassed by the pure Gothic or Byzantine or Greek examples of other cities. One evening I went with a friend of mine to visit the House of Parliament, that noble pile of buildings on the banks of the Thames. For days I had been skirting about them, interested in other things. The clock-tower, with its great round clock-face,--twenty-three feet in diameter, some one told me,--had been staring me in the face over a stretch of park space and intervening buildings on such evenings as Parliament was in session, and I frequently debated with myself whether I should trouble to go or not, even if some one invited me. I grow so weary of standard, completed things at times! However, I did go. It came about through the Hon. T. P. O’Connor, M.P., an old admirer of “Sister Carrie,” who, hearing that I was in London, invited me. He had just finished reading “Jennie Gerhardt” the night I met him, and I shall never forget the kindly glow of his face as, on meeting me in the dining-room of the House of Commons, he exclaimed: “Ah, the biographer of that poor girl! And how charming she was, too! Ah me! Ah me!”