In the Whispering Gallery I was not so impressed by the man in occupation as I was by the astonishing bird's-eye view of tiny people walking far below on a little chess-board of a pavement. Then suddenly I heard a whisper. I looked across to the other side of the gallery. The guide was whispering against the wall. His message came to me like a spirit voice from the Beyond, rather terrifying and sepulchral: "The diameter of the dome is a hundred and eight feet," said the Voice, and then it plunged into an account of Sir Christopher Wren. I walked away, congratulated the Voice, which seemed gratified, and said, "How dissatisfied and hard of hearing some people are!" High up below the dome of St. Paul's you have thrills. As you walk out on a large stone platform London lies below in a huddle of buildings and smoking chimneys. You pick out landmarks. How narrow even the widest streets look. To the east over the big black bulk of Cannon Street is the faint outline of Tower Bridge in the mist. Only the broad Thames has size. Men are midgets, an omnibus is blotted out from time to time by the flight of three pigeons; your eye rakes offices, exploring all floors at a glance, floors packed with typists. You feel like a beemaster looking into a hive; and all the time a rumble reaches you, the restless voice of the city. * * * Almost as wonderful as the smoky map of London spread below is the feeling that you, so leisurely examining St. Paul's while the rest of London is rushing about trying to pay the rent, are having a holiday in a foreign city. You feel a superiority over all those poor harassed people. You perceive a new angle to London life. You join the idle drifting population of sightseers and you feel rather sorry you did not bring your camera with you, just to help out the illusion that you are in a Florentine mood. Vergers, too, observe towards you the courtesy extended to strangers within the gate. There is a subtle difference in their manner. In their "Yes, sirs," and "No, sirs," and in their pointing and smiling you can feel the affection which churches have always, and quite rightly, extended to pilgrims. One man obviously considered me a distinguished visitor from foreign parts. He went out of his way to instruct me in history that I know quite well, and I wondered whether the only straight and honourable thing to do was to make a clean breast of it and stop him with: "Look here, I live in Knightsbridge and work in Fleet Street, and I'm frightfully sorry about it, and all that. I know it's most unusual and you won't believe me, but there it is." I had not the courage. I gazed insincerely into his enthusiastic eyes and said "Really!" and "By Jove!" and "How interesting," at appropriate pauses, so that when eventually I left him I went surrounded, for him, with all the beauty of a bird of passage. Heartbreak House