tered tomb was shown us, and here Omar Khayyam is buried. One advantage at least is preserved to the poet, which is that, as he foretold, the trees shed their blossoms on him twice a year; in other words, the blossoms of the fruit-trees in the garden are carried to his grave. The generally accepted idea that the poet referred to roses is due to an error in the translation of the Persian word gul, which signifies a flower, and, as Professor Browne proves, refers in the present instance to peach and pear-blossoms and not to roses.

Here, then, my pilgrimage was accomplished, and here, too, I would venture to express the view that Omar Khayyam deserves immortality as a poet, not only for his poems, but as Travel and Exploration.

The faults of the Londoner can always be recognized and identified; his good qualities soon become taken as a matter of course, and fail, after a while, to obtain honorable mention. Just as it is necessary, now and again, to pull oneself up with a jerk in walking about town and to recollect that because the scene is familiar it need not be deprived of one's admiration, so in regard to the inhabitant, it is worth while to take the view of the stranger and to make a guess at his impressions.

A visitor must admit that in London he is treated with courtesy. In the shops this is expected as something within the bargain, and brusqueness exhibited across the counter would be a startling novelty. Wherever payment has to be made, politeness is thrown in as a matter of course. The general good manners of town are more apparent in casual circumstances. A traveller in a public con

veyance wants to be set down at a turning not within the knowledge of the conductor; at once every passenger gives up other interest, and attention is concentrated on the problem. The delight of an omnibus on discovering the presence of a Colonial who cannot distinguish between St. Margaret's and the Abbey is something that cannot be concealed; brisk competition ensues for the privilege of acting as guide. A Londoner of whom a direction is asked takes a moment to recover from his surprise at the question (it seems incredible to him that anybody should be ignorant of the way to Charing Cross), but the situation once realized he will take considerable trouble in giving the information required; some may count it a defect that in doing so he sometimes forgets to range himself, as a constable does, side by side with a questioner, with the result that in his recommendations left becomes right and right becomes left, but his intention

is always admirable. As for the policemen themselves, the excellence of their behavior can be estimated in recollecting the stir occasioned when the conduct of a member falls below the high standard and an impartial magistrate has to speak of him in tones of reproof. Performing a considerable duty in looking after decorum, it may be claimed that the constable is equally valuable in representing officially the good manners of town. Even among the class who regard him as an opposing force, he is looked upon as one whose general knowledge has no limitations; and I heard a notorious exconvict the other evening consulting earnestly with a member of the S Division on the best way to deal with reluctant scarlet runners. The improvement which has taken place in the manners of children in the street finds its best signal in the fact that the presence of the unusual person rarely excites them into the derisive comments that formed subjects for the old pages of Punch. Let me add a further proof. A double line of St. Pancras schoolboys, marching to the public baths for their swimming lesson the other morning, were passed by a short procession going at a trot to Highgate Cemetery: every youngster at the right moment took off his cap. The diminishing number of squabbles and disturbances in London streets must be reckoned as an important item on the credit side. Now and again lads of the hard-up districts will set out to create tumult, and sometimes success attends the efforts; they are aged between fifteen and eighteen, and the action is the result, partly of an intense desire to prove that they are fully grown, partly because, the time being generally autumn, there is really little else for them to do. For the rest, domestic argument takes place less frequently in the roadway, and any attempt to re

vert to the old methods of public debate is met with urgent counsel from neighbors; the parties are recommended to transfer consideration to a private committee of the house. The decrease in outdoor fights is due, I believe, to the fact that so many youths are being taught to box: a scientific knowlege prevents them from behaving stupidly, and the training gives some control over temper; the tussle of the street is generally engaged upon by fools who are not sure whether they can fight, but are inclined to make an experiment. Here, the increasing temperateness of London in regard to drink is a factor. Anyone who knows the other large towns of Great Britain (and Ireland) can give the names of a dozen where the display of inebriety is more flagrant; Glasgow, for instance, on a Saturday night at ten gives a spectacle that would astonish a Cockney, making him inclined to disbelieve the evidence of his eyes. I do not know that the number of total abstainers has become much greater, but the aid of statistics is unnecessary to prove that moderation is more popular. A grown man scarcely dares to brag of his tipsiness the night before; only the type of the callow junior clerk speaks with pride of excess in this regard, and even he has to select his audience carefully for fear of being made the recipient of some contemptuous remark. There are reasons for this. The London workman does not have to labor so bard for his wages as do the similars in other towns; his days are less monotonous and evening joys are provided; the town smiles at him during his leisure hours, and the look-out is brighter than at, say, Wigan. Also, his earnings are not so large that he feels able to afford the dear excursions into luxury on which the Northcountryman engages. His language is limited, and it will take a good many further

years of State education to enlarge his vocabulary; but he is discovering some adjectives that form a variant on the two which, for many years, made up a great part of his conversation. He must have ascertained that their power of expressing thought had limits, and there was certainly a touch of pathos in the circumstance that he had to use them to help him to describe annoyance, satisfaction, regret, contentment. A sensitive ear may still be hurt in Bethnal Green at moments when conversation becomes rapid, but it receives nothing like the amount of damage incurred a dozen years ago.

The Londoner of every grade prides himself on alertness of retort, and he knows the chief element of a repartee is that it should be served instantly. Deliberation is of no avail. A promise to think it over and write does not gain marks in a contest of words. From his boyhood the Londoner has lived in an atmosphere of chaff, and if he has no special capability in invention he can always imitate. This, for instance, is the plan of the omnibus conductors. All omnibus conductors are not witty, but a few of them happen to possess a fair talent in the direction, and colleagues less gifted have only to adopt and adapt the methods; the fact that similar circumstances are frequently encountered where similar remarks are considered pat and appropriate, gives the class a reputation higher than it deserves. Also, the Londoner likes fun. A good anecdote, started in town, flies with extraordinary rapidity, so that one has to be fleet of foot to be the first messenger for more than a few hours. A man who can make up an excellent story and send it about rarely gets more than a small share of the applause, but he has the satisfaction of knowing that he has, in some small way, lightened the days and given excuse for laughter; the town has some practice

in the art of laughing; I wish it had more. The Londoner is a child who can be induced to amend manners if only the right blend of firmness and of persuasion be used. Years ago in setting out for the play, and proposing to obtain the unreserved seats, it was taken as a matter of course that a desperate struggle must precede entrance to any popular theatre, with a body of folk swaying and surging in front of the pit entrance, women screaming, umbrellas snapping, hats disappearing, lads shouting until the doors were suddenly unbarred by an official who sprinted up the staircase, whereupon the patrons forgot enmities, dismissed friendships, and rammed and crammed and jammed themselves into the opening; the street resembled, ten minutes later, the field of Waterloo on the day after the battle. Similarly, there existed Promenade Concerts where the music was cautiously arranged so that no bar should be above the comprehension of the unmusical, and young blades of town, devoting themselves to the ample refreshment counter behind the orchestra, counted the evening wasted unless they could say afterwards that they had been turned out of the place on account of riotous behavior. All this has changed. All this has improved. It was only necessary in one case to issue a request that patrons of the theatre should line up in two's instead of forming a turbulent half circle, only required in the other that something better than infantile waltzes should be offered; the Londoner ranged himself at once, and few sights impress more deeply those who have memories of town as it was than the spectacle to be seen at Queen's Hall, where hundreds of people, closely packed in what is called the promenade, listen attentively to a thirty-five minutes' symphony, without so much as a sign of impatience beyond a glance of re

proach at the water fountain for showing indifference. To find anything resembling the old behavior inside a theatre you now have to go to Edg ware Road on a Saturday night; even there the tumult only lasts while preliminaries are being mentioned on the stage: so soon as the heroine trips on with a basket of roses, the galleryordering itself, in sterner tones than those used by the officials, to keep order-settles down quietly to watch her duel against horrid fate. Even the comments wrung from the audience in moments of stress are now exceedingly rare; in the larger theatres they have almost ceased, but some time since, when a notable actor manager made his appearance in Act One through double doors, throwing them open with an air and standing there in impressive silence for the moment, a voice from the gallery did call out, "Next station, Marble Arch!" For the rest, the disturbance within theatres comes from occupants of the private boxes, whose elocutionary powers are better than they know.

The general impression of the Londoner on holiday, and one that will require many pens working through many years to eradicate, is that he goes intoxicated to the Heath, where he dances foolishly after changing hats with his lady companion, roaring his way home at a late hour, and generally breaking the peace into small fragments. I spent nearly the whole of last Bank Holiday at Hampstead. I saw in the afternoon two boys simulating inebriety, but stopping this on seeing one of their teachers; in the late evening, in the course of half an hour's walk home, I detected three men and one woman who were extravagantly lively as a consequence of drink. There was dancing on the Heath, and good dancing, too; skipping (we should all feel a great deal better in health if we found some corner and

skipped privately for half an hour every day), swinging in boats, a dozen different opportunities for testing skill, from shooting at a ball that danced on a spurt of water to the aiming at cocoanuts on dwarf sticks, and the crashing of a hammer on a machine which registered the amount of force put into the task; everywhere a good blend of decorum and gaiety. Now, when you consider the anticipations preceding the day, the encouragement to youth on finding itself in a large open space to run amok and create mischief, the fact that here is an occasion on which there is money to be spent, friends encountered, relatives welcomed, it will be agreed that the Londoner has discovered how to take his pleasures sanely. Not, of course, everyone goes to the open on Bank Holiday. Many a Londoner devotes the hours to his back garden. The pride of a townsman who by courage, ability, and artfulness can induce flowers to grow is something that may possibly be equalled-it can scarcely be surpassed; if in addition he owns a cucumber frame, or, with ordinary luck, raises lettuces, then he becomes a man who must only be addressed in tones of great deference. In secondclass compartments of City trains you will see, any summer morning, young and middle-aged men ignoring their newspaper and risking the acquisition of a squint in anxiety to admire the rose in their buttonhole; waiting with a certain impatience to respond to inquiries concerning its title. Children of the hard-up districts are being encouraged in this direction, and their flower shows given during the daffodil and hyacinth time in such neighborhoods as Shoreditch and Bethnal Green give them some of the joys of paternity. Where no facilities exist for private cultivation, window boxes are used, and increasingly used, from Grosvenor Square west to Canrobert

Street east, and there is good reason to believe that the time will come when any window in any quarter of town will reckon itself naked and ashamed unless its sill contributes some color and some brightness to the general effect. The sentiment which the Londoner, young, middle-aged, and old, hides in regard to so many subjects is not concealed where flowers are concerned. You can make yourself more popular by taking bunches to the infants' department of the County Council schools than by practising any other form of bribery.

The small people in the hard-up quarters of town are so wonderful in their, perhaps, premature cleverness that it is difficult to see why greater efforts are not made to carry them safely through the perilous first year of their lives. The fact has to be recognized that parents are sometimes careless, often ignorant; it must be said in their favor that they are rarely intentionally unkind; they show gratitude for any assistance given in the preservation of their little ones. In Brunswick Place, Hoxton, we have started a home for wasting babies intended to deal with small patients not considered to come within the scope of hospital work, but all the same likely to make but a brief stay in the world unless treated wisely and correctly. It is amazing to notice the swift improvement in health, appearance, and spirits. They come in, desolate mites with the skin hanging loosely on their puny limbs, a tired air of not caring whether they live or not; a week or two of proper feeding and cleanliness and they become round-faced and cheerful, answering readily to the complimentary attentions of even a clumsy bachelor. The London child, if it does get over these dangerous early months, becomes a wiry person with a good deal of vitality, and, in spite of sur roundings, not more subject to the ab

sences of good health than a child who lives in the fresh air of the country. Theoretically, five people living in one room ought not to live; as a matter of fact they do have a fairly good innings, although the centuries that are sometimes scored on village greens are rarely recorded at Abney Park. The Londoner owes something to himself; a good deal to his town, where events are always happening, new incidents being prepared, and a lively interest continuously excited.

He is an enthusiastic collector of occurrences, for which reason he never can, however urgent the task on which he may be engaged, refrain from adding himself to any crowd that is assembling, and he does not leave until he has ascertained all the particulars. The Londoner possesses some of the instincts of a journalist; his desire to be in a position to report exclusive news is sufficiently acute to encourage him at times into exaggeration. The City man, arriving home, likes nothing so much as to be able to put the question "Whom do you think I met today?" insisting that his wife should guess, and keeping her upon the tenterhooks of suspense before proclaiming the information. Failing imperial news of this kind, he has, with any luck, a sheaf of incidents that his observation has gained, from the presence of distinguished visitors at the Mansion House to the crippling of a motor omnibus in Newgate Street; the wife, on her side, offers a number of happenings which have come under her notice since his departure at twenty to nine that morning. Thus a fair exchange is made, to the advantage of both parties. I have mentioned that the Londoner is sometimes tempted into exaggeration. This happens only when the actual event is, from circumstances not within his control, lacking in sparkle and pungency. He cannot be charged with the instinctive un