We discussed smell minutely, and I discovered that his life in Billingsgate had made him immune from fishy smells. How wonderful Nature is! Only when he returns from his holiday is he conscious of a little something in the air. Billingsgate is perhaps the most libelled spot in London. Fifty years ago you had to wax your ears. The language was awful. To-day the Billingsgate fish porters are as polite and charming as we all are. They are the backbone of Billingsgate, for this market is worked on the most primitive system of hard transport. The Genoese galleys which in the Middle Ages anchored near by were unloaded in exactly the same way. So were Pharaoh's galleys, and Cæsar's. These men, wearing queer-shaped leather helmets rather like stunted Burmese pagodas, carry all the fish in crates on their heads. When a man's neck "sets," as they call it, he can carry sixteen stone on his head. They do it every day and all day. "Mind your back, _please_!" say the fish porters of Billingsgate. "Shove over the hammer--if you don't mind, Jack!" I heard one say. "Certainly!" replied Jack. So much for that. * * * Then I walked out on Billingsgate Wharf and had a real thrill. This is where London began. It is probably the oldest wharf on the Thames. Old Geoffrey of Monmouth, who would have made a fine American reporter, says that it takes its name from Belin, King of the Britons four hundred years before Christ. Stowe thinks that it was once owned by a man called Biling. It is certain, however, that the Romans landed their furs and their wines here, and at this spot on the Thames the first imports of London were dumped, the first merchants gathered. To the left I saw the bluish shadow of Tower Bridge. The brown Thames water licked the broad hull of a fish trawler. Crate after crate of herrings caught so far away in the North Sea were unloaded for London, and as I passed again through the ripe, rich tang of the market a man was buying lobsters which I suppose a lovely girl will enjoy as she makes eyes at someone over the rim of her champagne glass. Haunted Devonshire House is dead and gone. I hope that its name may be perpetuated by the new commercial building, but I do not know. When the workmen were performing acute surgical operations on old Devonshire House I was interested to hear people, who knew the Duke quite well by his photographs, express intimate regret at this deed. "Dear old Devonshire House!" they said. "What a shame it is that these grand old...." And so on and so forth. They were wistful. They gave the impression that they knew the pink bedroom awfully well (don't you know); they that had lingered on every inch of the famous staircase. They were like people who mourned the downfall of the old home.