But I was never more impressed than I was this day walking from Cleopatra’s Needle to the Tower. The section lying between Blackfriars Bridge and Tower Bridge is very interesting from a human, to say nothing of a river, point of view; I question whether from some points of view it is not the most interesting in London, though it gives only occasional glimpses of the river. London is curious. It is very modern in spots. It is too much like New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Boston; but here between Blackfriars Bridge and the Tower, along Upper and Lower Thomas Street, I found something that delighted me. It smacked of Dickens, of Charles II, of Old England, and of a great many forgotten, far-off things which I felt, but could not readily call to mind. It was delicious, this narrow, winding street, with high walls,--high because the street was so narrow,--and alive with people bobbing along under umbrellas or walking stodgily in the rain. Lights were burning in all the stores and warehouses, dark recesses running back to the restless tide of the Thames, and they were full of an industrious commercial life. It was interesting to me to think that I was in the center of so much that was old, but for the exact details I confess I cared little. Here the Thames was especially delightful. It presented such odd vistas. I watched the tumbling tide of water, whipped by gusty wind where moderate-sized tugs and tows were going by in the mist and rain. It was delicious, artistic, far more significant than quiescence and sunlight could have made it. I took note of the houses, the doorways, the quaint, winding passages, but for significance and charm they did not compare with the nebulous, indescribable mass of working boys and girls and men and women which moved before my gaze. The mouths of many of them were weak, their noses snub, their eyes squint, their chins undershot, their ears stub, their chests flat. Most of them had a waxy, meaty look, but for interest they were incomparable. American working crowds may be much more chipper, but not more interesting. I could not weary of looking at them. I followed the Thames in the rain to the giant plant of the General Electric Company, and thought of Sir Thomas More, and Henry VIII, who married Anne Boleyn at the Old Church near Battersea Bridge, and wondered what they would think of this modern power-house. What a change from Henry VIII and Sir Thomas More to vast, whirling electric dynamos and a London subway system! A little below this, coming once more into a dreary neighborhood of the cheapest houses,--mud-colored brick,--I turned into a street called Lots Road, drab and gray, and, weary of rain and gloom, took a bus to my hotel. What I know of the Thames I have described. It is beautiful. [Illustration] THE MONROE DOCTRINE IN THE VENEZUELA DISPUTE HOW THAT CONTROVERSY PAVED THE WAY FOR THE PANAMA CANAL BY CHARLES R. MILLER Editor of “The New York Times”