All travelers lie. I am going to try to be an exception to this rule, and shall, to the best of my ability, cling to the truth as a shipwrecked mariner does to a spar. I shall try to conquer the tendency to lie that overcome every man who gets a hundred miles away from home. But I presume I shall fail; and so when I get home and say that living is cheaper and better in London than it is anywhere in America, please say to me, "You are lying!" You will do the correct thing. No doubt when there I shall say to Smith or Thompson, "My boy, what you want to do is to go abroad. You want to see London. And as for the expense, what is it? Your passage across is only one hundred dollars--ten days--and that is but ten dollars a day. And then you can live so much cheaper in London than you can in New York that it is really cheaper to go abroad than it is to stay at home." [Illustration: A LONDON STEAK.] I presume I shall say this when I get home, for I know the tendency of the traveler to lie. I have traveled all over North America, and I confess, with shame mantling my cheek, that I have at times added some feet to the height of mountains and to the width of rivers, and to the number of Indians, and once I did invent an exploit which never happened, and I have narrated incidents which never occurred. It is such a temptation to be a hero when you know you can never be successfully disputed. While I am yet young in foreign travel, and capable of an approximation to truth, I wish to say that London is not only not a cheap place to live, but an exceedingly dear one. [Sidenote: THE MATTER OF COST.] "Just think of it," said a travel-wise New Yorker, in New York, to me, "just think of a steak for a shilling! Here you pay twice that!" So we do, but when you pay fifty cents for a steak in New York, you get a steak, and you get with it bread and butter _ad libitum_--you get pickles, and sauces, and potatoes, and all that sort of thing. Your fifty cent steak, with the accompaniments it carries, makes you a meal, and a good one. In London your steak is twenty-five cents, but it is only a sample. After eating it you want some steak. Then you pay six cents for potatoes, two cents for what they call a bread--you always have more and there is a charge for each individual slice--you pay two cents for each tiny pat of butter, you are compelled to struggle for a napkin, and if you ask for ice to cool the infernal insipid water, you pay two cents for that, and you get just enough to aggravate you. And, then, when you are through, the smirking mass of stupidity and inefficiency they call a waiter wants and expects a sixpence, which is twelve and one-half cents more.