Guides are not particularly numerous in England. Even in the places
most frequented by the sightseer they do not abound in any profusion. At
Madame Tussaud's, for example, we found only one guide. We encountered
him just after we had spent a mournful five minutes in contemplation of
ex-President Taft. Friends and acquaintances of Mr. Taft will be shocked
to note the great change in him when they see him here in wax. He does
not weigh so much as he used to weigh by at least one hundred and fifty
pounds; he has lost considerable height too; his hair has turned another
color and his eyes also; his mustache is not a close fit any more,
either; and he is wearing a suit of English-made clothes.
On leaving the sadly altered form of our former Chief Executive we
descended a flight of stone steps leading to the Chamber of Horrors.
This department was quite crowded with parents escorting their children
about. Like America, England appears to be well stocked with parents who
make a custom of taking their young and susceptible offspring to places
where the young ones stand a good chance of being scared into connipshun
fits. The official guide was in the Chamber of Horrors. He was piloting
a large group of visitors about, but as soon as he saw our smaller party
he left them and came directly to us; for they were Scotch and we were
Americans, citizens of the happy land where tips come from. Undoubtedly
that guide knew best.
With pride and pleasure he showed us a representative assortment of
England's most popular and prominent murderers. The English dearly love
a murderer. Perhaps that is because they have fewer murderers than we
have, and have less luck than we do in keeping them alive and in good
spirits to a ripe old age. Almost any American community of fair
size can afford at least two murderers--one in jail, under sentence,
receiving gifts of flowers and angel cake from kind ladies, and waiting
for the court above to reverse the verdict in his case because the
indictment was shy a comma; and the other out on bail, awaiting his
time for going through the same procedure. But with the English it is
different.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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