peless.

Does any place come up to London I wonder? Having never been out of
England I cannot give an opinion. Unfortunately I have not the gift,
like some people, of either imagining or describing places I have
never seen--descriptions generally gleaned from other books and
compiled under one authorship as original compositions. Why cannot
they be content with laying their English stories in English scenery:
places they know well and can write about. Some save up their money in
order to go abroad and visit one particular place, so as to bring new
scenes into their new books. But ah, how weary you get of this one
place! It is brought into at least three of their next novels.
Everything, past, present and future seems to happen there. Your one
prayer, as you lay down the book, is to the effect that they may soon
be able to save up a little more and visit another spot.

There is so much going on in May, June, and July, that it is a
difficulty to get through all your engagements and yet see everything
there is to be seen. Then there is the Park. Two or three hours of the
day must at least be spent in the Park. There we all come out to show
ourselves and to look at others. There the equestrians canter up and
down the Row. Such equestrians too! If foreigners take their ideas of
English riding from the Row, they must form a high opinion of our
horsemanship.

There are the loungers flocking around their friends or walking up and
down in the hope of admiration. And they get it too, for who could
help admiring such master-pieces of a tailor's skill? Are these really
the descendants of that Adam whose posterity had all to earn their
bread by the sweat of their brow? These automatons, whose only
business in life seems to be to look after pretty women and
themselves? Men are supposed to be bread winners, but they have a
very easy time of it, I think, though they generally try to make
themselves out so overworked. Go into that great centre of business,
the City, and you find everyone of these busy men out and about,
always apparently in a great hurry, never seeming to arrive at any
destination, running about and hustling each other, occasionally
meeting an acquaintance, which proves a good opportunity for one to
stand the other a "drink." A funny way men have of showing their
affection, have they not? "Ah! how de do, old fellow? Come and have a
drink," is their invariable salutation to an intimate friend. After
all it is better