The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-12-14


 \VV me to spend a day sightseeing w in the city" I gasped. But when she reminded me that I ought to look once more on some of the old land marks of London, I was fattered Into gracious acceptance.
 One soft purry August morning we started out I was supposed to be abso- lutely under her direction, but when she remarked casually that we would take a bus, I rebelled.
 T have never been in or on the horrid things 'I1 protested. "and never intend to-"
 But she only said, "We'll stand on the corner of Oxford stret, and wait for a City Atlas" and somehow I immediately felt quite accustomed to City Aliases, and intuitively knew it would be a blue one but 1t wasn't.
 Initiating Miss Anna's air of habitual custom I swung myself aboard the moving monster, and laboriously climbed the curving companionway at the back
 Once in our seats. 1t was not so bad; though very like riding the whirlwind, without being allowed to direct the storm.
 We went on, absorbed in our view of kaleidoscopic London. until Miss Anna decreed that we go down to the ground again. There was no elevator, as in the Flatiron building. so we tumbled down the back stairs and were thrown off.
 The sequence of the places we visited do not remember but they seemed to be mostly churches and taverns.
 ck it should be, being, like a corporation, without soul.
 As we left the church the Charter house put itself in our way. Though other British subjects were educated at this school 1t remains sacred to the mem-' ory of Thackeray. From here he wrote to his mother: There are but 370 boys in this school, and I wish there were only 369." But visitors to the Charter house are glad that the three hundred and seventieth boy remained there, and stamped the whole place with his gentle memory. The atmosphere of the Charter house is wonderfully calm; it does not connote boys, but seems tranqully im- bued with the later wisdom of the great men who spent their youthful days with in it's walls.
 We went next to the Cheshire Cheese. The imposing personality of Dr. Johnson and the antiquity of the famous tavern led me to anticipate great things, and I was sorely disappointed Gas probably most visitors are) at the plainly spread table, the fearfully hard seats and the trying umbrella rack filled with sawdust.
 Of course, we occupied the historic cor ner, where, according to the brass tab let, Dr. Johnson loved to finger; but two young American women, whose tastes are not of the sanded floor and mulled ale variety, cannot at a midday meal whoop up much of the atmosphere that probably surrounded the smoke wreathed midnights of Johnsonian revelry.
 Not that we didn't enjoy it. for we were of mind to enjoy everything that day; but the appreciation was entirely ob- jective. Methodically we climbed the stairs and viewed all the rooms of the old, old house, and on the top floor were duly shown by the guide the old armchair in which Dr. Johnson used to sit. A stout twine was tied across from arm to arm, that pilgrims might not further wear out the old cushion. When I, as an enor- nous jest, asked the guide to cut the string that I might sit in the historic chair he cheerfully did so, and I con sidered the fee we'll spent that allowed me to finger for a moment on the very dusty cushions of Dr. Johnson's own chair
 afterward learned that the string busi- ness was a fraud, and that it was re- newed and cut again for each curious vis- itor. accept with equanimity this clever ruse. but I'm. still wondering how they renew the dust.
 Owing to a change of mood. we no longer rode on the buses. but took a han som from one place to another. This was not 50 extravagant as it might seem, for. notwithstanding assertions - to the cons