Have you ever shivered in London in January? Then you don’t know what it is to be cold, not even when the thermometer drops to zero and New York’s all snowed in but the subway, and the street cleaning department has to spend a million dollars to dig you out of the drifts. Yes, I know about the Gulf Stream. It does pleasantly moderate the outdoor climate so that it is never really winter in England. But the Gulf Stream does not get into their houses. I was a luncheon guest the other day at a residence with a crest on its note-paper. The hostess put on a wrap to pass down the staircase from the drawing-room to the dining-room, and with my bronchitis—all Americans get it in London—I was simply unable to remove my coat at all. This mansion, English ivy-covered, and mildewed with ages of aristocracy, has never had a real fire within its walls. There are only the tiny grate fires which are, as it were, mere ornaments beneath the mantelpiece. The drawing-room fire is lighted only just before the guests arrive: the men with lifted coat-tails back up to it, their hands crossed behind them spread to the blaze; the dog and the cat draw near to the fender; conversation about the fire becomes general in the tone of voice, well, in which one might admire a rare sunset. The dining-room fire, likewise, is lighted only just before the butler announces luncheon. And in all this grand mansion you discover there isn’t any place to be warm, unless perchance the cook in the kitchen may have it. Well, English hotels strive to be as coldly correct as this English high life. And I have suffered cold storage in Piccadilly at the rate of ten dollars a day as long as my bronchitis will bear it. I ought to be ill in bed at this moment. But I can’t be. There isn’t a hospital bed in Europe without a wounded soldier in it. Schools, orphanages, monasteries, country residences, castles and many hotels have been turned into hospitals, all of them full of soldiers. A civilian who may be ill literally has not where to lay his head. So I set out desperately to find heat in London. I think I have searched every hotel from Mayfair to Bloomsbury Square. As a special concession to American patronage a few of them have put steam-heat on their letter heads, “central heat,” they call it. But all European radiators, when there are any, are as reluctant as their elevators. “Lifts” move under groaning protest and if they go up, they let you know they do not expect to come down. The radiators are equally as sullen about radiating. They don’t want to at all. English radiators are such toy affairs as to be incapable of any real action. They are so small they get lost behind the furniture. At the Hyde Park Hotel, the clerk and I hunted all over the place: “I’m sure we used to have them,” he said. At last our search was rewarded. We found the one that was to keep me warm. It was behind the dresser and such a miniature affair, you’d