wordy dramas; then, turning on the author,
London's own vileness called to his. Thackeray the satirist needed no
further inspiration than the nicely drawn distinction between Belgravia
and Mayfair. Generous London refused nothing to the seeking mind. Nor
is it more sparing to-day than it was in the past; it yields its
inspiration to the gloom of Galsworthy, the pedagogic utterances of Mr.
Wells, the brilliant restlessness of Arnold Bennett, and the
ever-delightful humour of Punch.

On this morning in November London was in a gracious mood, and Hyde
Park, coloured with autumn's pensive melancholy, sparkled in the
sunlight. Snowy bits of cloud raced across the sky, like sails against
the blue of the ocean. November leaves, lying thick upon the grass,
stirred into life, and for an hour imagined the fickle wind to be a
harbinger of spring. Children, with laughter that knew no other cause
than the exhilaration of the morning, played and romped, weaving dreams
into their lives and their lives into dreams. Invalids in chairs
leaned back upon their pillows and smiled. Something in the laughter
of the children or the spirit of the wind had recalled their own
careless moments of full-lived youth.

Paris, despite your Bois de Boulogne; New York, for all the beauties of
your Central Park and Riverside Drive--what have you to compare with
London's parks on a sun-strewn morning in November?

Reaching the tan-bark surface of Rotten Row, Selwyn and the English
girl eased the reins and let the horses into a canter. With the motion
of the strong-limbed chestnut the American felt a wave of exultation,
and chuckled from no better cause than sheer enjoyment in the morning's
mood of emancipation. He glanced at Elise Durwent, and saw that her
eyes were sparkling like diamonds, and that the self-conscious bay was
shaking his head and cantering so lightly that he seemed to be borne on
the wings of the wind. Selwyn wished that he were a sculptor that he
might make her image in bronze: he would call it 'Recalcitrant Autumn.'
He even felt that he could burst into poetry. He wished----

But then he was in the glorious twenties; and, after all, what has the
gorged millionaire, rolling along in his beflowered, bewarmed,
becushioned limousine, that can give one-tenth the pleasure of the grip
on the withers of a spirited horse?

Sometimes they walked their beasts, and chatted on such subjects as
young people choose when spirits are hi