join us in
such a democratic journey at any time we like.

We think we get a kind of vague apprehension of what London means from
the top of a 'bus better than anywhere else, and this vague apprehension
is as much as the thoughtful or imaginative observer will ever arrive
at in a lifetime. It is too stupendous to be comprehended. The mind
is dazed by its distances, confused by its contrasts; tossed from
the spectacle of its wealth to the contemplation of its poverty, the
brilliancy of its extravagances to the stolidity of its miseries,
the luxuries that blossom in Mayfair to the brutalities that lurk in
Whitechapel.

We often set out on a fine morning, Salemina and I, and travel twenty
miles in the day, though we have to double our twopenny fee several
times to accomplish that distance.

We never know whither we are going, and indeed it is not a matter of
great moment (I mean to a woman) where everything is new and strange,
and where the driver, if one is fortunate enough to be on a front
seat, tells one everything of interest along the way, and instructs one
regarding a different route back to town.

We have our favourite 'buses, of course; but when one appears, and we
jump on while it is still in motion, as the conductor seems to prefer,
and pull ourselves up the cork-screw stairway,--not a simple matter in
the garments of sophistication,--we have little time to observe more
than the colour of the lumbering vehicle.

We like the Cadbury's Cocoa 'bus very much; it takes you by St.
Mary-le-Strand, Bow-Bells, the Temple, Mansion House, St, Paul's, and
the Bank.

If you want to go and lunch, or dine frugally, at the Cheshire Cheese,
eat black pudding and drink pale ale, sit in Dr. Johnson's old seat,
and put your head against the exact spot on the wall where his
rested,--although the traces of this form of worship are all too
apparent,--then you jump on a Lipton's Tea 'bus, and are deposited
at the very door. All is novel, and all is interesting, whether it be
crowded streets of the East End traversed by the Davies' Pea-Fed Bacon
'buses, or whether you ride to the very outskirts of London, through
green fields and hedgerows, by the Ridge's Food or Nestle's Milk route.

There are trams, too, which take one to delightful places, though the
seats on top extend lengthwise, after the old 'knifeboard pattern,'
and one does not get so good a view of the country as from the 'garden
seats' on the roof of the omnibus; stil