rtunately managing to escape being carried away with the wreck. The
experience of that awful night is one never to be forgotten, a night
that, according to the captain, was the worst that he had ever witnessed
during his thirty years of experience, and it was with feelings of great
relief that we dropped anchor in the harbor of New Haven the next
morning, where the sun shone brightly and the sea was comparatively
quiet.

We were a pretty seedy-looking lot when we boarded the train for London,
where we debarked at the Victoria Station about half-past nine o'clock,
still looking much the worse for wear and like a collection of invalids
than a party of representative ball players. Getting into carriages we
were at once driven through the city to Holburn, where quarters at the
First Avenue Hotel had been provided, and where we were only too glad to
rest for a time and recover from the awful shaking up that the English
Channel had given us; a shaking up that it took Mrs. Anson some time to
recover from, as it also did the other ladies of the party.

We had expected to play our first game of ball in England on the day of
our arrival, but the game had been called off before we got there
because of the storm, the grounds being flooded. It was a lucky thing
for us that such was the case, as there was not one of the party who
could have hit a balloon after the experience of the night before, or
who could have gone around the bases at a gait that would have been any
faster than a walk.

CHAPTER XXX. THROUGH ENGLAND, SCOTLAND AND IRELAND.

The first thing that impresses the stranger in London is the immensity
of the city, and the great crowds that continually throng the streets
night and day, for London never sleeps.

The first day after our arrival I noted numerous changes that had taken
place in various quarters since my visit of fifteen years before, during
which time the city seemed to have grown and spread out in every
direction. The hotel where we were quartered was in close proximity to
the Strand, one of London's greatest and busiest thoroughfares, and here
the crowds were at all times of the most enormous proportions, the
absence of street car and the presence of hundreds of hansom cabs and
big double-decked tramways running in every direction being especially
noticeable. The weather at the time of our visit was cold, foggy and
disagreeable, and as a result our sight-seeing experiences were somewhat
curtailed and