ondon."

The river was smiling as she tripped gayly down to the water, and the
red-coated watermen were smiling, too, and nudging one another. But
little cared we! Dolly in holiday humour stopped for naught. "Boat,
your honour! Boat, boat! To Rotherhithe--Redriff? Two and six apiece,
sir." For that intricate puzzle called human nature was solved out of
hand by the Thames watermen. Here was a young gentleman who never heard
of the Lord Mayor's scale of charges. And what was a shilling to such as
he! Intricate puzzle, indeed! Any booby might have read upon the young
man's face that secret which is written for all,--high and low, rich and
poor alike.

My new lace handkerchief was down upon the seat, lest Dolly soil her
bright pink lutestring. She should have worn nothing else but the hue of
roses. How the bargemen stared, and the passengers craned their necks,
and the longshoremen stopped their work as we shot past them! On her
account a barrister on the Temple Stairs was near to letting fall his bag
in the water. A lady in a wherry! Where were the whims of the quality
to lead them next? Past the tall water-tower and York Stairs, the idlers
under the straight row of trees leaning over the high river wall; past
Adelphi Terrace, where the great Garrick lived; past the white columns of
Somerset House, with its courts and fountains and alleys and architecture
of all ages, and its river gate where many a gilded royal barge had lain,
and many a fine ambassador had arrived in state over the great highway of
England; past the ancient trees in the Temple Gardens. And then under
the new Blackfriars Bridge to Southwark, dingy with its docks and
breweries and huddled houses, but forever famous,--the Southwark of
Shakespeare and Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher. And the shelf upon
which they stood in the library at Carvel Hall was before my eyes.

"Yes," said Dolly; "and I recall your mother's name written in faded ink
upon the fly-leaves."

Ah, London Town, by what subtleties are you tied to the hearts of those
born across the sea? That is one of the mysteries of race.

Under the pointed arches of old London Bridge, with its hooded shelters
for the weary, to where the massive Tower had frowned for ages upon the
foolish river. And then the forest of ships, and the officious throng of
little wherries and lighters that pressed around them, seeming to say,
"You clumsy giants, how helpless would you be without us!" Soon our own
wherry