When I think of London as it was once upon a time, that is the time when Charles Dickens lived in it. This London was as wonderful as Bagdad, though in different ways. If you want to know what it was like, you must go to the Dickens books. Dickens was the only one who ever saw London in that way. When you ask whether it was the real London, you have to take his word for it. It was real to him and he had the power to make it real to us. That is what we call genius. The London the Dickens people lived in was a big city, so big that one easily got lost in it. The railroads were just coming in, but they didn’t get into the stories. There were no telephones or electric lights or automobiles or radios. People came in from the green country on gay stage-coaches with prodigious tooting of horns and cracking of whips. They stopped at inns, where a great deal of eating and drinking was going on. But when they left the inns to explore the town, they plunged into a maze of the queerest streets imaginable. The streets ran in every direction except in the direction one wanted to go. Many of them were mere alleys, but they were always crowded. One soon got down to the river, where there were old warehouses that leaned over the water but never actually fell in. There were old and shabby houses, and the people were made to match them. That is what made them so interesting and exciting. Yet, though there were so many people on the streets that you didn’t know, it was curious to be all the time running across people you did know, or who knew you. If you were trying to hide, you were sure to be found out. On the other hand, you could get lost with no difficulty at all. One of the most interesting parts of the city to prowl around in was down by the water-front. The River Thames flowed through London just as mysteriously as the River Tigris flowed by Bagdad; and it was the scene of many adventures. To be sure, there were no palm-trees and no dervishes. But there were great ships coming from countries as far away as Arabia and the Spice Islands. On the banks of the river were great warehouses, with musty, mouldy cellars and strange garrets, and with all kinds of foreign smells. Back from the river were streets where people lived who could afford to live nowhere else. Some of them were dwarfed, with gnarled faces, as if they had not had sunlight enough when they were growing up. Some of these people were as bad as they looked, but many of them were much better. When you had time to become acquainted with them, you couldn’t help but like them. Each person had some little trick of manner which made it easy to recognize him. They had a way of doing the same thing over again, just as people have in real life. This made them amusing even when we could not approve of them.