street was so narrow � and alive with people along under or walking in the rain lights were burning in all the stores and dark recesses running back to the restless tide of the thames and they were full of an industrious commercial life it was interesting to me to think that i was in the of so much that was old but for the exact details i confess i cared little here the thames was especially delightful it presented such odd i watched the tumbling tide of water whipped by wind where moderate sized and were going by in the mist and rain it was delicious artistic far more significant than and sunlight could have made it i took note of the houses the the quaint winding passages but for the color and charm they did not compare with the indescribable mass of working boys and girls and men and women which moved before my gaze the mouths of many of them were weak their noses their eyes their their ears their flat most of them had a look but for interest they were american working crowds may be much more but not more interesting i could not weary of looking at them lastly i followed the river once more all the way from s needle to one heavily afternoon and found its mood varying splendidly though never once was it anything more than black gray changing at times from a pale or almost yellow to a solid leaden black hue it looked at times as though the thames something remarkable were about to happen so yellow was the sky above the water and the tall chimneys of over the way appearing and disappearing in the mist were irresistible there is a certain kind of which up and down the thames with a mast and sail which looks for all the world like something off the these boats with the smoke and the gray skies i was never weary of looking at them in the changing light and mist and rain over the water here very freely all the way from black to and along the they sat in scores solemnly the state of the weather perhaps i was delighted with the picture they made in places greedy wide winged artistic things finally i had a novel experience with these same one sunday afternoon i had been out all morning strange sections of london and arrived near black bridge about one o clock i was attracted by what seemed to me at first glance thousands of lovely clouds of them about the heads of several different men at various points along the wall it was too beautiful to miss it reminded me of the about the steamer at i drew near the first man i saw was feeding them out of a small box he had purchased for a penny throwing the tiny fish aloft in the air and letting the for them they ate from his hand above and about his head walked on the wall before him their bills and salmon pink feet showing delightfully i was delighted and hurried to the second it was the same i found the of small near by a man who sold them for this purpose and purchased a few boxes instantly i became the of another cloud and in hungry an a at forty it was a great sight finally i threw out the last tossing them all high in the air and seeing not one escape while i meditated on the speed of these birds which while scarcely moving a wing rise and fall with incredible swiftness it is a matter of gliding up and down with them i left my head full of birds the thames forever fixed in mind i went one morning in search of the tower and coming into the neighborhood of witnessed that peculiar scene which concerns fish fish or at least their always look as though they had never known a bath and are covered with and scales and here they wore a peculiar kind of rubber hat on which or of fish could be carried the hats were quite flat and round and reminded me of a smashed as the silk hat has been called the peasant habit of carrying bundles on the head was here to be a common characteristic of london on another morning i visited and the neighborhood of square i was delighted with the of life i found there particularly in ground and street horse road touched me as a name and street was strangely suggestive of a hospital not a wolf it was here that i encountered my first cart drawn by the little donkey you ever saw his ears standing up most nobly and his eyes suggesting the mellow philosophy of indifference the load he hauled spread out on a large table like rack and arranged neatly in baskets consisted of vegetables � potatoes and the like a merchant or followed in the wake of the cart calling out his wares he was not arrayed in uniform however as it has been pictured in america i was delighted to the thames listen to the accent in ground where ere you are could be constantly heard and these ere madam in earl street i found an old cab yard now turned into a where the of a church tower were visible tucked away among the of other things i did my best to discover of what it had been a part no one knew the ex now washing the wheels of an informed me that he had only been ere a little and the could not remember but it suggested a very ancient english world � as early as the just beyond this again i found the little chapel � part of an abandoned machine shop with a small hand bell over the door which was rung by means of a piece of common binding who could 