"Yes," he said, "there are some strange searchers. "In the summer many good, democratic Americans come over to trace their ancestry back to William the Conqueror!" "And the lost heirs," I said--"the would-be dukes?" "Ah!" he replied. "Ah!" He sighed. I noticed a shabby old man mournfully shuffling out. I felt certain that there was the ghost of ermine over him, and I hope that now and then his landlady, just to keep his poor heart up, drops a curtsy when she brings in the kippers and says: "Dinner is served--_your grace_." Fish Every morning at the uncomfortable hour of five a man in a peaked cap rings a big bell in Billingsgate Market and the lights go up. Then the haddocks and plaice, which you eat in due course, begin their commercial career. Shouting? Yes; most decidedly! The ozone which exudes from prostrate cod seems to have a singular effect on the lungs of the fish trade. In the old days, I am told, they used to shout definite fishy slogans such as: "Had-had-had-haddock!" or "Wink-wink-wink-winkles!" But only now and then, when some enthusiast becomes filled with the spirit of the past do you hear anything so interesting. It is mostly a swift, sharp, business-like affair, with a little violent auctioneering over in the corner. Lying in the Thames at the Wharf which is on one side of the market is a Danish trawler with North Sea salt caked on her funnel. Men run up and down the gangways carrying her cargo, while from every corner of the compass railway carts converge on that tangle of narrow streets which begins at the Monument. If you like statistics you will be interested to know that on an average eight hundred tons of fish pour into Billingsgate every day, and the majority comes by train. I wandered between lines of dead fish. Nothing on earth can look so dead as a fish. It is, in a lavish place of this kind, difficult to believe that fish have ever lived, have ever sported gallantly in the sea, making romantic love and building homes, and generously seeing to it that we shall go on having fish after soup. Incredibly dead codfish and inconceivably defunct skate lay strewn in rich profusion, herrings with red eyes and white-bellied plaice--all the fruit of the ocean mixed up with ice! Queer, fascinating things are apparently weeded out before they reach Billingsgate; there is none of the strange, snarling fish you see at Boulogne or Dieppe, none of the comic monstrosities with green whiskers which enchant you in Marseilles. Billingsgate is essentially an edible dump. Everything that comes into it is solemnly designed for the kitchen. Between the flabby corpses walk men and women--fishmongers, hotel buyers, and the like--prodding, examining, comparing, now and then tasting a shrimp--at five a.m., too!--sometimes cracking an experimental mussel!