here are hundreds
of thousands of people in this town who have no ambition except to get
a bit of bread to sustain them till they can get a drink of gin, and
gradually they let up on bread entirely and feed on gin, and look like
mad dogs and snarl at everybody they see, as much as to say: "What are
you going to do about it?"

[Illustration: Snarl at everybody they see 101]

A good square American meal would give them a fit, and they would go to
a hospital and die if the meal could not be got out of them.

Gosh, but I was glad to get out of the White Chapel district, and I kept
looking back for fear one of the men or women would slit me up the back
with a butcher knife, and laugh like an insane asylum inmate.

Do you know, those people who drink gin and go hungry are different from
our American murderers. Our murderers will assault you with a smile, rob
you with a joke on their tongue's end, and give you back car fare when
they hold you up, and if they murder you they will do it easy and lay
you out with your hands across on your breast and notify the coroner,
but your White Chapel murderer wants to disembowel you and cut you up
into chunks, and throw your remains head first into something nasty,
and if you have money enough on your person to buy a bottle of gin your
murderer is as well satisfied as though he got a roll. Some men in our
country commit murders in order to get money to lay away so they can
live a nice, respectable life and be good ever afterwards, but your slum
murderer in London just kills because his stomach craves a drink, and
when he gets it he is tame, like a tiger that has eaten a native of
India.

You may think this letter is a solemn occasion because I tell you about
things that are not funny, but if you ever traveled abroad you will find
that there is no fun anywhere except in America unless you make it or
buy it.

We are taking in the solemn things first in order to get dad's mind in a
condition so he can be cured of things he thinks ail him. I took dad to
the Tower of London, and when we got out of it he wanted to have America
interfere and have the confounded place burned down and grass sown on
the site and a park made of it.

The tower covers 13 acres of ground, and there are more things brought
to a visitor's attention that ought to be forgotten than you ever
thought about.

I remember attending the theater at home and seeing Richard the Third
played, and I remember how my sympathie