The thing that struck me most was that the buildings were largely a golden yellow in color, quite as if they had been white, and time had stained them. Many other buildings looked as though they had been black originally and had been daubed white in spots. The truth is that it was quite the other way about. They had been snow-white and had been sooted by the smoke until they were now nearly coal-black. Only here and there had the wind and rain whipped bare white places which looked like scars or the drippings of lime. At first I thought, “How wretched!” Later, “This effect is charming.” We are so used to the new and shiny and tall in America, particularly in our larger cities, that it is very hard at first to estimate a city of equal or greater rank, which is old and low and, to a certain extent, smoky. In places there was more beauty, more surety, more dignity, more space than most of our cities have to offer. The police had an air of dignity and intelligence such as I have never seen anywhere in America, and it was obvious at a glance. The streets were beautifully swept and clean, and I saw soldiers here and there in fine uniforms, standing outside palaces and walking in the public ways. That alone was sufficient to differentiate London from any American city. We rarely see our soldiers. They are too few. I think what I felt most of all was that I could not feel anything very definite about so great a city, and that there was no use trying. The first thing that took my attention in the stores was the clerks, but I may say the stores and shops themselves, after New York, seemed small and old. New York is new; the space given to the more important shops is considerable. In London it struck me that the space was not much and that the woodwork and walls were dingy. One can tell by the feel of a place whether it is exceptional and profitable, and all of these were that; but they were dingy. The English clerk, too, had an air of civility, I had almost said servility, which was different. They looked to me like persons born to a condition and a point of view, and I think they are. In America any clerk may subsequently be anything he chooses, ability guaranteed, but I’m not so sure that this is true in England. Anyhow, the American clerk always looks his possibilities, his problematic future; the English clerk looks as though he were to be one indefinitely.