pretty girls--perched on the front
steps under awnings, without so much as a pocket-handkerchief lawn
between them and the street. Persons of that class at home would be far
too shy to lounge about and be stared at, not only by the neighbours,
but by twenty strangers a minute; yet here they sat on rugs, and read,
or did embroidery, or swung back and forth in chairs that rocked like
cradles, paying no more attention to the passers than if they had been
flies.

By and by we came out of the quiet streets walled in with monotonous
rows of red brick or brown stone houses, into a scene of terror. It was
a street, too; but what a street! I thought that I'd grown accustomed
to motoring through traffic, for once Stan took me in his Panhard, all
the way from Battlemead to Pall Mall, where he stood me a very jolly
luncheon at the Carlton Hotel, but that experience was nothing to this.
I felt a little jumpy with Stan when we shot between omnibuses in a
space which looked twice too narrow, and once when I thought a
frightfully tall horse was going to bite off my hat; but I soon got
used to it.

If I were driven every day of my life for a year, through this terrible
street in New York, though, I should be no more used to it on the last
day than on the first. The only change in me at the end of that time
would be in my hair, which would have turned snow white, and be
standing up permanently all over my head like Struempel-Peter's, only
worse.

London roars--a monotonous, cannon-balls-in-the-cellar roar, with just
a light tinkle of hansom cabs sprinkled over the top of the solid
sound; but that great straight street into which we suddenly flashed
had no solid sound. It shrieked in short, sharp yells, made up of a
dozen distinct noises, each one louder and more insistent than the
other.

There were trams and tram bells, and motors and carriages, and over all
an appalling thunder of trains rushing to and fro above our heads, on
lines roofing the entire street, built upon iron stilts. Every minute
they swooped by, running north and south, and I trembled lest they
should leap their tracks and crush us into powder.

"It's only the Elevated, deah," said Sally, pitying my agitation, "and
it's never fallen down yet, so I don't believe it will to-day. You
shall take a ride with me if Cousin Katherine will let you, which she
probably won't. You can't think what fun it is shooting past the
windows of the houses; just like glancing into an