y stone before it eats it.
But the rich children and the poor children do not often meet, for if
the rich children go through the streets in the poorer parts they are in
motor-cars or cabs, and in their part of the park there are not many
poor children, while in the parks where the poor children go you do not
find many rich ones. And though there are parts of London where poor and
rich are very near together, yet their lives never mix as the lives of
country children do. Very often in the country a child knows the names
of all the other children in its village, and who they are and all about
them; but in London it is not so. And many rich children grumble all the
time if they do not have everything they want, and never think of their
poor little brothers and sisters, who would snatch eagerly at many of
the things they throw away.

Have you heard the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, who piped so
wonderfully that he could make anything follow him when he liked, and
how he piped so that all the rats ran after him, and he led them to the
river and they were drowned? When he asked the mayor and chief men in
the town to be paid for what he had done, they laughed, and said: 'No,
now the rats are dead, you can't make them alive again; we have got what
we wanted, and we won't pay you.' So the piper was very angry, and piped
another tune, and all the children in the town followed him; and he led
them on and on toward a great mountain, where a cave opened suddenly,
and they all went in, and were never seen again. I think if that Pied
Piper came to London he would find very many more different sorts of
children than ever he found in Hamelin, where--

'Out came the children running:
All the little boys and girls,
With rosy checks and flaxen curls,
And sparkling eyes, and teeth like pearls,
Tripping and skipping ran merrily after
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.'

There would be London children whose eyes did not sparkle, and who had
almost forgotten to laugh, as well as those like the children of
Hamelin, who were so bright and so gay.

CHAPTER II

LONDON

Now, we have seen something of the children who live in London, and it
is time to try to think a little of what London itself is like. As I
have said, the boys and girls who live there do not know very much about
it; they only know their own little corner of it, because London is so
big that it is almost impossib