fferent, by the way, from making
sketches in time of peace. It is a business full of possibilities, when
all manner of spy suspicions are afloat. I made up my mind to do a
sketch of the Royal Exchange. Not as I should have done it a year
before, mind you, nor even three months before, but now, with the
thought of bomb-dropping Zeppelins in the back of my mind. It occurred
to me when I was hurrying along one rainy evening in a taxi past the
Stock Exchange, the Globe Insurance, the Bank of England. Everywhere
cabs drawn up along the curbing, cabs slipping past, people, great
moving crowds of people with their umbrellas up, moving off down
Threadneedle and Victoria.

"A lot of human life and some very beautiful architecture and a good
part of the world's business, all concentrated here. And I thought to
myself what might happen should the cultured Germans get as far as
London, and should the defenders of the world's civilization drop a bomb
down into the heart of things here. I pictured to myself what havoc
could be wrought.

"And I thought, too, of places like Southwark. Ever been in Southwark?
Horrible. A year before, when I was making the sketches for my Dickens
book, I spent a great deal of time in the Southwark section. Now, with
the prospect of Zeppelins, I thought again of Southwark. A bomb in a
Southwark street! Good Lord, can you imagine the horror of it! There
fifty or sixty families are packed into a single tenement, and the
houses in their turn are packed one against the next along streets so
narrow that the buildings seem to be nodding to each other, touching
foreheads almost. Desperately poor people, children swarming every
moment of the day and night up and down these dark stairways, up and
down these hideously dark streets. Now drop a bomb in the midst of it
all. That is what Englishmen are thinking of now.

"I didn't go over into Southwark; I couldn't stand it. The next day I
went back to the Stock Exchange to make my sketch. I've done sketches in
London before--every nook and cranny of it--but this time I felt a
little nervous when I got there with my umbrella and my little tools.
But I managed it. I said to the bobby, I said--"

And then Mr. Smith, getting up from his chair and relapsing into the
frown that always means he is going to tell a story, showed how he
managed it. It is impossible to reproduce Mr. Smith's inimitable manner.

"'Are you, now?' said I.

"'Well, 'ow can I tell?' said he.