gara, thou
hearest the sound thereof--the fateful sound of that human Niagara,
where all the great rivers of London converge: the dark, strong floods
surging out from the gloomy fastnesses of the East End, the
quick-running streams from the palaces of the West, the East with its
wagons, the West with its hansoms, the four winds with their omnibuses,
the horses and carriages under the earth jetting up their companies of
grimy passengers, the very air busy with a million errands.

You are in the rapids--metaphorically speaking--as you crawl down
Cheapside; and here where the Bank of England and the Mansion House rise
sheer and awful from, shall we say, this boiling caldron, this 'hell' of
angry meeting waters--Threadneedle Street and Cornhill, Queen Victoria
Street and Cheapside, each 'running,' again metaphorically, 'like a
mill-race'--here in this wild maelstrom of human life and human
conveyances, here is the true 'Niagara in London,' here are the most
wonderful falls in the world--the London Falls.

'Yes!' I said softly to myself, and I could see the sly sad smile on the
face of the dead poet, at the thought of whose serene wisdom a silence
like snow seemed momentarily to cover up the turmoil--'Yes!' I said
softly, 'there is still the same old crush at the corner of Fenchurch
Street!'

By this time I had disbursed one of my two annual cab-fares, and was
standing a little forlorn at that very corner. It was a March afternoon,
bitter and gloomy; lamps were already popping alight in a desolate way,
and the east wind whistled mournfully through the ribs of the
passers-by. A very unflowerlike man was dejectedly calling out
'daffadowndillies' close by. The sound of the pretty old word, thus
quaintly spoken, brightened the air better than the electric lights
which suddenly shot rows of wintry moonlight along the streets. I bought
a bunch of the poor pinched flowers, and asked the man how he came to
call them 'daffadowndillies.'

'D'vunshur,' he said, in anything but a Devonshire accent, and then the
east wind took him and he was gone--doubtless to a neighbouring tavern;
and no wonder, poor soul! Flowers certainly fall into strange hands here
in London.

Well, it was nearing four, and if I wanted a grateful country's
twelve-pound-ten, I must make haste; so presently I found myself in a
great hall, of which I have no clearer impression than that there were
soft little lights all about me, and a soft chime of falling gold