A long canvas tube was carried up a ladder by a fireman, who attached it to the frame of an upper window. The occupants of that floor were then slid one by one to the ground through this tube, being caught at the bottom by the firemen. "Well, did you ever see anything like that!" cried John, amazed at the funny sight. "It's great, I say! I'd like to try it!" All the way up town, the talk was of fires. John had been tremendously interested in the English methods, and was planning to introduce the use of the canvas tube to his own city through a good Irish friend of his at a Boston fire-station. "Honor bright, don't you have many fires over here?" he demanded of Mrs. Pitt. "We have 'em all the time at home. It must be stupid here without 'em!" "No, we really have very few," Mrs. Pitt responded. "In winter, there are a number of small outbreaks, but those are very slight. You see, we burn soft coal, and if the chimney is not swept out quite regularly, the soot which gathers there is apt to get afire. When a chimney does have a blaze, the owner has to pay a fine of one pound, or five dollars, to make him remember his chimney. In olden times, perhaps two hundred and fifty years ago, there used to be a tax levied on every chimney in a house. There's a curious old epitaph in a church-yard at Folkestone, which bears upon this subject. It reads something like this: 'A house she hath, 'tis made in such good fashion, That tenant n'ere shall pay for reparation, Nor will her landlord ever raise her rent, Nor turn her out-of-doors for non-payment, From chimney-money too, this house is free, Of such a house who would not tenant be.'" They all joined in a good laugh over this, but Betty remarked that she thought it was "more of an advertisement for a house than an epitaph." Their particular bus had been slowly making its way down Ludgate Hill, along Fleet Street, into the Strand, through Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus, into Piccadilly itself, and had now reached Hyde Park Corner, where our friends climbed down the stairs and swung themselves off. Betty was grumbling just a little. "I never can get down those tiny stairs," she exclaimed, "without almost bumping my head and catching my umbrella in the stair-rail!" Mrs. Pitt smiled. "That shows you are not a true Londoner, my dear. We are never troubled. But, never mind; they don't have buses in Switzerland." At this, Betty was instantly herself again. "London wouldn't be London without the funny, inconvenient buses, I know. And it's dear, every inch of it,--buses and all!" Mrs. Pitt pointed out Apsley House, where lived the great Duke of Wellington. A curious fact about this stately old mansion is that on fine afternoons, the shadow of a nearby statue of this hero is thrown full upon the front of his former home. [Illustration: OLD GENTLEMEN, STOUT LADIES, YOUNG PEOPLE, AND SMALL CHILDREN, ALL RIDE IN ENGLAND. _Page 287._]