I have at times found fault with the Irish in America, and I don't rank Ireland as the greatest country under the heavens, but that morning I felt for her a most profound respect. Had Ashantee been the first land we had sighted that morning, I presume I should have forgiven the Ashantees for killing and eating the missionaries. After one has been at sea, even for eight days, land is the principal wish of the heart. One day and night across the Channel, and we made Liverpool. There were promises to meet in London, or Paris, exchanges of cards, the passing the Custom House with our baggage, the purchase of tickets, and we found ourselves in the cars of the Midland Road and scurrying away through Derbyshire to London. [Illustration: OFF FOR LONDON.] [Illustration] CHAPTER II. LONDON, AND THINGS PERTAINING. The largest city of the world! The most monstrous aggregation of men, women, children; the center of financial, military, mental, and moral power! The controlling city of the world! This is London! There may be in the effete East larger aggregations of what, by courtesy, may be called humanity, for in those countries the limits of cities are not properly defined, nor is the census taken with any accuracy. But these cities exercise no especial influence upon the world; they control nothing outside of their own countries; they reach out to nothing; they are simply hives. [Sidenote: THE ENGLISHMAN.] Even an American, with all his pride in his country and her magnificent cities, feels somewhat dwarfed to find himself in a city eight times as large as Chicago, four times as large as New York, and his pride in wealth and power, and all that sort of thing, collapses when he realizes the fact that he is where the finances of the world are absolutely controlled; that he is at the very center of the vastest money and military power in the world! There is nothing greater as yet than London, and whether there ever will be is a question. I hope not. Men, women and children are all very well, but they thrive best where they have room to develop. Four millions of them together on so small a piece of ground dwarfs them. They do better on the prairies. England is an enormous octopus, whose feelers, armed with very strong and sharp claws, embrace the world, and London, the mouth and stomach of the monster, is sucking its prey steadily and mercilessly. The animal lost one feeler which America cut off in 1776, and her grasp is weakening elsewhere, but she has enough. India contributes its life blood, China contributes, the islands of the sea contribute, and pretty much the whole world gives more or less.