Hardly less dear than hansom or coach was the top of the omnibus that took us down to Barings’ in Threadneedle Street to draw our money or to go sight-seeing in the city. “Benk, benk, benk!” cried the guard, swinging on the back of the ’bus; “’Igh Holborn, ’Igh Holborn, Shepperd’s Bursh, Elephant and Castle!” An artist friend took us one Saturday night to see Edgeware Road. The long street was crammed with people buying their Sunday dinners. At the doors of the butchers’ shops stood men in white aprons with long glittering knives, chanting a peculiar monotonous cry: “Buy, buy, buy! Beef, pork, mutton, will you buy, will you buy?” On either side the way was lined with costermongers, whose barrows were lighted by flaring lamps. They, too, shouted their wares,--shrimps, periwinkles, oysters, fruit, vegetables, toys of all descriptions, cooking ware and clothing, for on Saturday night Edgeware Road was transformed into a nocturnal fair, where the poor of London bargained, haggled, and gossiped. It was an amazing spectacle, and a strange pendant for another picture that still remains with me,--Hyde Park, after church on a Sunday morning, with its beauties and “swells.” Eight o’clock in the evening is the hour I remember best of these memorable London days. Then I would be driving through Hyde Park in a hansom beside my mother. The long twilight still held, and through the lilac haze the lamps glowed and shone as we passed an endless stream of vehicles coming from the opposite direction, filled with people going out to dine like ourselves. There were a few of the old-time coaches with two powdered, silk-stockinged footmen standing on the footboard behind, a vast number of smart broughams, but the majority like ourselves drove in hansom cabs. We caught glimpses of ladies of dazzling beauty, gentlemen immaculate in evening dress and opera hats: sometimes we recognized a friend in a swiftly passing hansom, or some celebrity. The possibilities suggested, the romances guessed, the scandals and dark secrets imagined, as hansom after hansom flashed by and eye met eye, set the heart beating, the imagination dancing. Vanity Fair! Vanity Fair! will the world ever again see anything like that London I remember? CHAPTER XI ROME Rome, the old enchantress, held me enthralled from the moment St. Peter’s dome floated before my eyes like a faint blue bubble on the far horizon. We passed the winter of 1878-1879 with my mother’s sister, Louisa (Crawford) Terry; doubtless the environment of her apartment in the old Palazzo Odescalchi and the companionship of the Crawford and Terry cousins--Romans born and bred--had something to do with the spell!