An extension of the old Tube from the Post Office, via Gresham Street, to the Guildhall, had long been a cherished scheme of the City Fathers. The old approach through King Street and Cheapside to the head-quarters of the Corporation was only suitable for use in fine weather. But whatever changes and chances had befallen London during the first forty years of the twentieth century, British weather had developed but little alteration, and certainly no improvement. That State processions and civic functions should be spoilt by drizzle, rain, or fog, as so frequently had happened to pageants of the past, was felt to be not merely inconvenient, but quite uncalled for. The new alternative route presented many advantages. Celebrities and non-celebrities bound for the City on great occasions would be enabled to enter a special train at the West End, and could come to the surface in Guildhall Yard. The feast of oratory and the flow of champagne might thus be attained without the disadvantage of a preliminary journey through the rain-swept streets of the murky city. In like manner the members and officers of the corporation would enjoy similar immunity whenever official occasion required them to go westward. The feminine note in politics had something to do with the project; for woman, advanced woman, in her hours of ease and finery did not like to have her feathers and laces spoilt by London smuts and drizzle; and woman, of course, had become very much in evidence in the City of London. Facetious persons went so far as to say that the City Fathers had been superseded by the City Mothers, and further justified their views by treating the male minority as indistinguishable from a set of old women. The arrival of Woman as a member of County Councils and other public bodies, not to say in Parliament itself, long ago had rendered it practically certain that the conservatism of the City must ultimately yield to the onslaughts of the sex. In the fulness of time a woman took her place on the Bench as Chief Magistrate of the City of London. A wondering world was called upon, for the first time, to do honour to a Lady Mayoress, who shone with no reflected light. She herself was the Sun of the City firmament. Lord Mayor for some years there was none.