taste. In person, manners and
apparel he was quite beyond me. Mrs. Mahoney, however, as we soon called
her, was a dear, whole-souled, traveled, unaffected New England woman.
But Monsieur! Lord! There was no holding him at arm's length. He brooked
not resistance. I was wearing a full beard. He said it would never do,
carried me perforce below, and cut it as I have worn it ever since. The
day before we were to dock he took me aside and said:

"Mee young friend"--he had a brogue which thirty years in Algiers, where
he had been consul, and a dozen in Paris as a gentleman of leisure, had
not wholly spoiled--"Mee young friend, I observe that you are shy
of strangers, but my wife and I have taken a shine to you and the
'Princess'," as he called Mrs. Watterson, "and if you will allow us, we
can be of some sarvis to you when we get to town."

Certainly there was no help for it. I was too ill of the long crossing
to oppose him. At Blackwall we took the High Level for Fenchurch Street,
at Fenchurch Street a cab for the West End--Mr. Mahoney bossing the
job--and finally, in most comfortable and inexpensive lodgings, we were
settled in Jermyn Street. The Mahoneys were visiting Lady Elmore, widow
of a famous surgeon and mother of the President of the Royal Academy.
Thus we were introduced to quite a distinguished artistic set.

It was great. It was glorious. At last we were in London--the dream of
my literary ambitions. I have since lived much in this wondrous city and
in many parts of it between Hyde Park Corner, the heart of May Fair, to
the east end of Bloomsbury under the very sound of Bow Bells. All the
way as it were from Tyburn Tree that was, and the Marble Arch that is,
to Charing Cross and the Hay Market. This were not to mention casual
sojourns along Piccadilly and the Strand.

In childhood I was obsessed by the immensity, the atmosphere and
the mystery of London. Its nomenclature embedded itself in my fancy;
Hounsditch and Shoreditch, Billingsgate and Blackfriars;
Bishopgate, within, and Bishopgate, without; Threadneedle Street and
Wapping-Old-Stairs; the Inns of Court where Jarndyce struggled with
Jarndyce, and the taverns where the Mark Tapleys, the Captain Costigans
and the Dolly Vardens consorted.

Alike in winter fog and summer haze, I grew to know and love it,
and those that may be called its dramatis personae, especially its
tatterdemalions, the long procession led by Jack Sheppard, Dick Turpin
and Jonathan Wi