ears at the Zoo; and you think that the boys and
girls who live in London spend all their time in seeing wonderful
things.

If this is what you think, some of it is true enough. There are a great
many wonderful things to be seen in London, and if you want to hear
about them at once you must skip all this chapter and a great many
others besides, and go on to page 241, where you will find them
described. But if you want to know what London itself is really like you
must wait a little longer. The best people to tell you would be the
children who live in London; they will read this book, and, of course,
they could answer all your questions, but they would not all answer in
the same way.

Some would say: 'Oh yes, of course we all know the Zoo, but that's for
small children; _we_ are quite tired of a dull place like that, where
everyone goes; we like balls, with good floors for dancing, and
programmes, and everything done as it is at grown-up balls; and we like
theatres, where we can sit in the front row and look through
opera-glasses and eat ices. Madame Tussaud's? Yes, it's there still; we
went to it when we were quite little babies, but it's not at all
fashionable.'

And another child might say: 'I don't mind driving with mother in the
Row when I'm really beautifully dressed.'

But I'll tell you a secret about the little boys and girls who talk like
this: they are not really children at all, they never have been and
never will be; they are grown-up men and women in child shapes, and by
the time their bodies have grown big they won't enjoy anything at all.
Master Augustus will be a dull young man, who hates everybody, and does
not know how to get through the long, dreary day; and Miss Ruby will be
a mere heartless woman, who only cares to please herself, and does not
mind how unhappy she makes everyone else. And all this will be because
their foolish father and mother let them have everything they wanted,
and allowed them to go everywhere they liked, and that is not at all
good even for grown-up people, and it is very, very much worse for
children.

There are, however, many other sorts of children in London, and it is
rather interesting to hear what they think of the town in which they
live. For instance, there are the children of people who are not at all
poor, who have nice houses and plenty of money, but who are yet sensible
enough to know that their children must have something else besides
pleasure. If we asked