It seems odd to make separate comment on something so thoroughly involved with everything else in a trip of this kind as the streets of London; but they contrasted so strangely with those of other cities I have seen that I am forced to comment on them. For one thing, they are seldom straight for any distance, and they change their names as frequently and as unexpectedly as a thief. Bond Street speedily becomes Old Bond Street or New Bond Street, according to the direction in which you are going, and I never could see why the Strand should turn into Fleet Street as it went along, and then into Ludgate Hill, and then into Cannon Street. Neither could I understand why Whitechapel Road should change to Mile End Road; but that is neither here nor there. The thing that interested me about London streets first was that there were no high buildings, nothing, as a rule, over four or five stories, though now and then you actually find an eight- or nine-story building. There are some near Victoria Street in the vicinity of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Westminster. For another thing, the vast majority of these buildings are comparatively old, not new, like those in New York or Rome or Berlin or Paris or Milan. London is older in its seeming than almost any of these other cities, and yet this may be due to the fact that it is smokier than any of the others. I saw it always in gray weather or through, at best, a sunlit golden haze, when it looked more like burnished brass than anything else. Then it was lovely. The buildings in almost all cases were of a vintage which has passed in America. Outside of some of the old palaces and castles in London,--St. James’s, Buckingham, the Tower, Windsor,--there are no fine buildings. The Houses of Parliament and the cathedrals are excluded, of course. One evening I went with a friend of mine to visit the House of Parliament, that noble pile of buildings on the banks of the Thames. For days I had been skirting about them, interested in other things. The clock-tower, with its great round clock-face,--twenty-three feet in diameter, some one told me,--had been staring me in the face over a stretch of park space and intervening buildings on such evenings as Parliament was in session, and I frequently debated with myself whether I should trouble to go or not, even if some one invited me. I grow so weary of standard, completed things at times! However, I did go. It came about through the Hon. T. P. O’Connor, M.P., an old admirer of “Sister Carrie,” who, hearing that I was in London, invited me. He had just finished reading “Jennie Gerhardt” the night I met him, and I shall never forget the kindly glow of his face as, on meeting me in the dining-room of the House of Commons, he exclaimed: “Ah, the biographer of that poor girl! And how charming she was, too! Ah me! Ah me!” I can hear the soft brogue in his voice yet, and see the gay romance of his Irish eye. Are not the Irish all inborn cavaliers, anyhow?