not see because they are so close to our eyes? As it is a murmurous
and noisy city in comparison with those of Japan, so it is peaceful
and quiet in comparison with Chicago or New York. A friend of mine
from that City of Unrest says that the sound of the London streets has
a soothing, lulling effect on him, and makes him sleepy, like the
sound of falling water.

As I went up to Euston to-day to meet an Oriental visitor, I fell to
speculating how the city might look to him. A very cultured,
intellectual fellow he is, who looks into the backs of the eyes of
things. A Chinaman born, he had been through college in America, and
knew American cities; he had also been studying in Paris, but this was
his first visit to London. A wet, drizzling day was not the most
propitious for his first impressions. Slopping along in a cab through
the muddy streets, as I went under the portico of Euston Station I
was forcefully reminded of one of the big gates of Pekin. There is a
suggestion of the same massiveness; but the massiveness is only
make-face, like the painted cannon on a Chinese city gate. It was an
imposing portico to a shamble of sheds.

The railway terminus is the real gate of the modern city.

Yet what absurdly incongruous things these London city gates are--a
salad jumble of architecture and machinery with a mayonnaise of
train-oil and soot!

As I waited for my friend long trains came rumbling in under a canopy
of smoke that hung about the grim iron rafters of this labyrinth.
Fifteen minutes ago these trains had been spinning along through the
green fields and across the shady lanes of what looked like "Merrie
England," although now shaved down and trimmed to intense
respectability of cultivation. The heavens darkened and the air
thickened as they came close to their journey's end, until they slow
down as if gropingly finding their way into the cavernous gateway of
the great dingy city.

What a strange conglomeration of people was waiting on each platform!
There was a train leaving to catch the steamer for New York, there was
a line of people waiting to take tickets for a close-by station, there
was a line of soldiers waiting to be entrained; an American girl was
standing on an automatic machine, and getting the railway porter to
translate from stones into pounds how much she weighed after her visit
to Europe. A couple of Oriental servants seemed to have lost
themselves in the labyrinthine station, and were wandering ro