Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-10-20
Music Almost Everywhere.

~
Band'' blowing and fiddling Justify. And
here and there are solitary performers; a man or
woman, sometimes old and white-haired, stand
ing alone in the middle of the street and singing.
You do not need to make a journey into White
chapel to see the poverty of London, or to be
amazed at the thousand ways by which people
pick up living in tho London streets
Every instantaneous photograph of street
scene In London, every snap of q kodak from
St. Giles to st. James. from London Docks to
Hyde Park, would discover somebody with
tall hat. and somebody with polished boots.
The top hat is worn by everybody who has any
aspirations whatever. And even people with
out spark OF aspiration contrive, somehow or
other, to keep pair of shining shoes. 1t is
one of the national characteristics. of course,
it rains every day in London 1 was there two
weeks. and never ventured out of doors with
out the protection of An umbrella. And vet.
along the wet and sloppy streets, here go these
regiments of resplendent shoes. 1t is one OF
the mysteries of London.
OF course the people who walk these streets
are of every nation under heaven. There are
no surprises in London. You are prepared for
anything. You may meet Mr.. Gladstone, or
the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Mahara-
jah of Cashmere, or detachment of the Saliva
tion Army, or your next door neighbor. Peo-
pie of all complexions people Of all profess
sions from the parson to the peddler, people
hablted in every garb and hue which ever
troubled the dreams of a tailor the good the
bad and the indifferent. princes and paupers.
jostie each other in the London streets. 1 used
to go, nearly every day. along the way between
Charing Cross and Tottenham Court road. Ont
of Charing Cross opens the Strand the street of
traffic, and Whitehall leading down past the
palace to Westminster Abbey and the Parlia-
ment Houses. and Pail Mall toward st. James
Park and buckingham Palace and the dwell
road intersects Oxford street. where many of
the best shops are; and about midway between
the two you pass the narrow alleys of the ''Sev-
en- Dials." 1t is significant journey.
Never Can See London.
NOBODY has ever seen London. 1 nse the
verb, OF course, in the sense in which
Pope Plus TX. used it, who was accustomed, it
is said, to inquire of people who came to pay
their reverence to him, "How long have you
been in Rome?" And if they said .'aweek," he
would answer. "Ah, then, you have seen
Rome" If they had been there month the
holy father would reply, "Ah. then. you have
begun to see Rome" But if the visitor were
an inhabitant of Rome. or had spent years
there. the Pope would say, "Ah, you have
found out that you can never see Romer' No
body but the Wandering Jew has ever seen
London. The Wandering Jew with a good
many more more centuries mt ries on his hands than he
or three hundred years of sightseeing day in
and day out, finally succeed in getting some
thing like an adequate idea of London.
Suppose you begin with the British Museum.
They have the electric light there now, and the
building is open at night as well as BY day.
There is a great fence around it, strong enough
=
get inside the gates and up the big stone steps,
and past the grim stone Egyptian who guards
the door. and at last are quite within that
palace of marvels, you know not which way
to turn, nor where to begin looking nor where
to stop, and you need to remind yourself every
now and then that you are really you 1t is
more wonderful than any dream of Solomon.
1t is the worlds treasure house. There is
everything here from everywhere.
For here are carvings from Egypt and great
statues from Assyr1a; here are the sculptures
4, ,saIak la tno hn fn fhn rta..
Parthenon. and the remains of the wonderful
tombs which they built for King Mausoleus
at Halicarnassus. and bas-reliefs from the
royal palace of Sennacherib, and the Rosetta
stone which gave the clue to the meaning of
the hieroglyphics on the Egyptian monuments.
Here are candlesticks which stond in Roman
wore, and swords which Roman soldiers
welded, and mummies, and mummies and
mummies! Some of men and women, some of
little children with their playthings, some of
cats. Here they are those old. proud Egypt
ians, who sat once in palaces and were lords
over thousands of their fellow men, and now
Tom, Dick and Harry point their fingers at
them in a land of whose very existence they had
never dreamed. And such treasures of manu-
scripts! Old missals, painted by monks in the
corners of old cloisters, where the sky looks
in now over the tops of the broken wall and the
ivy grows against the stones, and the Codex
Alexandrinus one of the three oldest copies of
the Bible, written out in the year 400 and some
thing, the name OF the patient scribe unknown:
and letters which Luther wrote. and Calvin and
John Knox; Anne Boleyn's letter to Wolsey
thanking him for bringing about her marriage
same Henry bearer of the title Defender of
the Faith" both the letter and the bull read
ing strangely in the light of after history: and
Millions copy OF the Bible. and Lady Jane
Caxtou printed.
No End to the Sights.
a ND so on, and SO on. endlessly till your head
aches. The Wandering Jew, in process.of
seeing" London, might stay in the British
Museum till Macaulay's New Zeaander shall
tie his electric balloon to broken arch of
London Bridge to sketch the RUNS of St.P Pauls,
and still there would be more for him to learn
there. And yet the British Museum is but one
among the thousand places of interest in this |
enormous London.
One whole day spent in the reading room of |
the British Museum. Nobody can get in there |
unless he goes for genuine study You have to |
get the special permission of the head librarian.
He asks you for reference to some London |
householder, and wants to know what use |
you purpose making of the reading room, and |
YOU set down your name and your city address |
in big blank book. and then you get the val |
liable bit of paper which passes you by the |
guardian of the great door. You are in an !
immense room covered with dome of glass |
with ribs of iron. There are no other windows. |
You notice that the walls of the room from the |
floor to the beginning of the arch are lined |
with books, the upper ones made available by |
galleries In the center of the room are the |
desks of the librarians, set in circles wheel |
within wheel. Upon shelves beneath these |
desks you find the catalogue of the most exten- |
sive and valuable library in the world The |
catalogue is in 1900 volumes. And in it you
can fi1d anythingi 1t was subject little out |
of the common way upon which wanted in
formation. I wanted to find out all that |
was discoverable about an old saint who |
lived some thirteen hundred years ago upon |
the little Scotch island Of Iona had con-
siderable list of books in which it was likely |
that something might be found. Some of the |
books were old and some were new. Some /
were expensive volumes with fine plates and |