fond of driving in the
Park. Perhaps also there may be with her the popular Duchess of York,
from her house in Piccadilly, and possibly baby Princess Elizabeth. When
the royalties come there is quite a stir of excitement. The great iron
gates opening on to Constitution Hill are thrown open--they are only
opened for royalty; everyone else has to go through the side gates--and
then there is a flash of scarlet liveries, and the crowd of people
standing in the open space before Hyde Park call out, 'The Queen, the
Queen!' And the much-loved Queen drives smiling through them, bowing
this way and that, with that gracious manner that has made everyone love
her; and the men raise their hats and the ladies wave their
handkerchiefs as the carriage dashes across the open space, kept clear
by the police, and goes into the Park, where all the waiting carriages
are. The Queen has another lady with her, or perhaps her only daughter
who has now a home of her own, and they drive round and round the Park
several times, enjoying the fresh ah.

The streets of London are in some places very narrow--too narrow to
allow tram-cars to run through them as they do in some other large
towns, and at the height of the season the blocks in the traffic in some
of the West-End streets are quite alarming. Imagine a tightly-packed
mass of vehicles, restive horses in splendid carriages, huge
motor-omnibuses, smart automobiles, taxi-cabs, and tradesmen's vans, all
squeezed together. Perhaps the policeman has held up his hand at a
crossing to let some carriages get across from a side street, and
everything has had to stop, public and private alike. Stand up on the
top of an omnibus and look this way and that: what can you see? Rows and
rows of great omnibuses crowded with people, both outside on the roof
and inside, all waiting just because one man has held up his hand.
Nothing astonishes foreigners more than this; indeed, some people say it
is the one thing Frenchmen like most to see in London--the power of the
policeman. He has perfect control of all the traffic, and if he says a
thing must stop, it must obey him even if it be the carriage of a duke.
In Paris they tried to imitate this, and they gave their policemen
little white wands to hold up to stop the traffic when it was necessary;
but the drivers of the cabs took no notice, and the poor French
policeman would run about yelling at them and waving his little white
wand and shouting to them to stop, a