curred to. It is a credit to our
human nature, not a blemish upon it; for it shows that underlying all
our depravity (and God knows and you know we are depraved enough) and
all our sophistication, and untarnished by them, there is a sweet germ
of innocence and simplicity still. When a stranger says to me, with
a glow of inspiration in his eye, some gentle, innocuous little thing
about "Twain and one flesh" and all that sort of thing, I don't try to
crush that man into the earth--no. I feel like saying, "Let me take
you by the hand, sir; let me embrace you; I have not heard that pun for
weeks." We will deal in palpable puns. We will call parties named King
"your Majesty" and we will say to the Smiths that we think we have heard
that name before somewhere. Such is human nature. We cannot alter this.
It is God that made us so for some good and wise purpose. Let us not
repine. But though I may seem strange, may seem eccentric, I mean to
refrain from punning upon the name of this club, though I could make a
very good one if I had time to think about it--a week.

I cannot express to you what entire enjoyment I find in this first visit
to this prodigious metropolis of yours. Its wonders seem to me to be
limitless. I go about as in a dream--as in a realm of enchantment--where
many things are rare and beautiful, and all things are strange and
marvelous. Hour after hour I stand--I stand spellbound, as it were-and
gaze upon the statuary in Leicester Square. [Leicester Square being a
horrible chaos, with the relic of an equestrian statue in the center,
the king being headless and limbless, and the horse in little better
condition.] I visit the mortuary effigies of noble old Henry VIII., and
Judge Jeffreys, and the preserved gorilla, and try to make up my mind
which of my ancestors I admire the most. I go to that matchless Hyde
Park and drive all around it, and then I start to enter it at the Marble
Arch--and am induced to "change my mind." [Cabs are not permitted in
Hyde Park--nothing less aristocratic than a private carriage.] It is a
great benefaction--is Hyde Park. There, in his hansom cab, the invalid
can go--the poor, sad child of misfortune--and insert his nose between
the railings, and breathe the pure, health-giving air of the country and
of heaven. And if he is a swell invalid who isn't obliged to depend upon
parks for his country air he can drive inside--if he owns his vehicle.
I drive round and round Hyde Park and the mor