The one blessed thing about London, especially to travelers who have rushed through miles of country and crowded the sight with constantly varying scenes, is that it can not be seen in a day. We might as well try to eat a life-time’s Thanksgiving banquet at once, or to grow from youth to age in a night. London is of all places in the world the one to stay in, and we have come to stay. Not at any so-called American boarding-house, not even at the great caravansary in Portland Place, or down by the Alexandra Gate, but in our own hired house. A wee place, not far from St. James in Piccadilly, whose master was once upon a time head butler to lord somebody or other, and whose mistress was the maid to my lady. And butler and maid saved their wages and were wed, and now there they are living in the basement of this their home, he to wait at table, with an air that makes our masculine friends feel, as if he were saying, “Yes, my lord,” and “No, my lord;” and she to keep all tidy and bright in our tiny parlor and dining room, and the bedrooms above. Here we can rest until the home letters are written and the books read, and we are ready to attack the great city with real zest, happy in the thought of what it has in store. Our life will cost us half what it would at the great hotels, where we should meet only the American life we know so well. English life we can see only in the streets, in church, in making purchases, in books, and in its out of door public aspects, unless we are indeed so fortunate as to have brought letters that shall open English homes. Then, indeed, we come to know England and the English in a way to appreciate its best, and to estimate justly what seem to us some of its worst characteristics.