ening, everything was changed. Things assumed a hitherto hidden
significance. Beauty broke her blossoms everywhere about the grey
streets and the sordid interiors that were my environment.

And my moment was given to me by London. The call came to me in a dirty
street at night. The street was short and narrow, its ugliness softened
here and there by the liquid lights of shops, the most beautiful of all
standing at the corner. This was the fried-fish shop. It was a great
night, because I was celebrating my seventh birthday, and I was proud
and everything seemed to be sharing in my pride. Then, as I strutted, an
organ, lost in strange lands about five streets away, broke into music.
I had heard organs many times, and I loved them. But I had never heard
an organ play "Suwanee River," in the dusk of an October night, with a
fried-fish shop ministering to my nose and flinging clouds of golden
glory about me, and myself seven years old. Momentarily, it struck me
silly--so silly that some big boy pointed a derisive finger. It somehow
... I don't know.... It....

Well, as the organ choked and gurgled through the outrageous
sentimentality of that song, I awoke. Something had happened to me.
Through the silver evening a host of little dreams and desires came
tripping down the street, beckoning and bobbing in rhythm to the old
tune; and as the last of the luscious phrases trickled over the roofs I
found myself half-laughing, half-crying, thrilled and tickled as never
before. It made me want to die for some one. I think it was for London I
wanted to die, or for the fried-fish shop and the stout lady and
gentleman who kept it. I had never noticed that street before, except to
remark that it wasn't half low and common. But now it had suffered a
change. I could no longer sniff at it. I would as soon have said
something disrespectful about Hymns Ancient and Modern.

I walked home by myself, and everything answered this wonderful new
mood. I knew that life was rapture, and, as I looked back at the
fried-fish shop, swimming out of the drab murk, it seemed to me that
there could never be anything of such sheer lyrical loveliness outside
heaven. I could have screamed for joy of it. I said softly to myself
that it was Lovely, Lovely, Lovely; and I danced home, and I danced to
bed, and my heart so danced that it was many hours before I slept.

From that day London has been my mistress. I knew this a few days later,
when, as a birthday tre