In one way and another, by books and maps and imagination, I was already on familiar terms with the world-city which I had never seen. I had read it up, studied it, knew intricate maps of it, and stories of its traditions. At a time when the youth of my country and generation were expected to follow Horace Greeley's advice, "Go West and grow up with the country" or, as interpreted by the cynics, "Go West and start a graveyard"--I made a chance to go East across the Atlantic. And I went. So I beheld the Old World. But I had chances enough, that is, I made them, to see the New World later. And I saw it. History in the making is interesting,--sometimes, and if you survive. History already made and rounded and woven into legend, the scenes among which men have lived and wrought through centuries, shaping the rich past on which we build the present, hold a fascination which did not seem to come to me from regions where man was pioneering. London was the magnet that first drew me. And as the cab turned south from Leadenhall Street and moved slowly along the noisy streams of traffic, I exclaimed presently, to the disappointment of my companions who knew the town and were prepared to point out its places of celebrity: "London Bridge at last!" "At last?" said they. "Why, this is quick work for the time of day. How many minutes?" "But I've been eighteen years on the way," said I. I managed to keep awake and hungry till we got to the Wiltshire Road in Brixton, where my guides {3} from Fenchurch Street were staying. The stagger and strain of the sea voyage had left me stupidly weary, so that as soon as possible after dinner I went to bed. Although I stayed three weeks in that house, all recollection of a dining room has vanished. That may be attributed to the zeal of youth and its indifference to the art of dining, an art acquired speedily enough later on. But never in the subsequent years have I been able to revive a single memory of that Brixton house. And the only recollection of the first three weeks in England is that on the first morning, at an office in the City, I was violently seasick.