s covered with rich harness, and the fat coachman on the box, with
his three-cornered hat and brilliant livery, looks very proud of himself
and his position.

When the procession has passed the people close in over the road again,
and jostle and push and laugh, and everyone seems to be going in
different directions, and Lord Mayor's Show is done for another year.

When I began writing about the Lord Mayor I mentioned Dick Whittington
and Bow bells. Bow Church is a very famous church. One way of expressing
the fact of being a Londoner used to be to say 'born within sound of Bow
bells.'

The old church was burnt down with all the others in the Fire, and the
church that now stands was built by Sir Christopher Wren. In the old
church it was a rule that the bell should be rung every night, and when
the shopmen heard the bell they shut up their shops. Now, the men who
rang the bell sometimes were late, and this made the apprentices, the
young men who worked in the shops, very angry, for they wanted to get
away from their work and go out into the streets to enjoy themselves;
but their masters would not let them go until the bell rang. So the
young apprentices made up a rhyme:

'Clarke of the Bow bell, with thy yellow lockes,
For thy late ringing, thy head shall have knockes.'

And the clerk was frightened, and said:

'Children of Cheape, hold you all still,
For you shall have Bow bell rung at your will.'

Cheape was the name of the street where the church stands, and it is now
called Cheapside. I expect the clerk kept his promise, for the young
apprentices were very sturdy, and they would have given him 'knockes' at
once. I do not know how they liked being called children.

On the top of Bow spire there was a figure of a dragon, which looked
very fine when the sun shone; and in another part of the City, near the
Bank and the Mansion House, there was on the top of the Royal Exchange a
grasshopper, which was the sign of a great merchant of Queen
Elizabeth's time, who built the first Exchange. Now, there was an old
saying that when the grasshopper from the Exchange and the dragon from
Bow Church should meet, the streets of London would run with blood. But
this did not seem at all likely to happen, for there is a long distance
between the Exchange and Bow Church. But rather less than a hundred
years ago the dragon was taken down to be cleaned, and at the same time
someone thought the grasshoppe