The morning journal-courier., 1908-03-06
LONDONS IN LONDON So Many That It Is Difficult to Make a Single
 Picture.
AT LEAST TWENTY L0NDONS
And Then There Is Much More That Is Hard to Define and
 Tell About.

does not focus readily. There are too many Londons, too many glaring con- trasts, to bring the whole into sin gle mind picture. Twenty Londons, all distinct, separate, contradictions one of the other, would hardly suffice. Ev- cry man has his own particular men, tai view of London. To one, the mere of the name conjures up scene of Piccadilly with its crush of well-dressed, prosperous people. and of Regent street and its splendid shops; to another comes at once vision of cool, shady Pail Mall, walled in with massive clubs and evidences of transformations wealth and solidity; to a third comes a glimpse of St. James street. whose Georgian -windowed clubs seem still to echo the revelries of Charles James Fox and his fellows, who gambled until daylight and slept only to gather strength for another days carousings; to a fourth appears a picture of London at night, thor oughfares crowded with carriages lad en with the most wonderfully gowned and bejeweled women, or view of the restaurants gleaming with light and filled with diners in evening dress; a fifth will think of his London as representing the Strand or Fleet street, busy, breathless, unheedng, seeming ever anxious to get on or off one or the other of the screeching mo- tor omnibuses that will take you any, where you like to think of for a few pence; homesick expatriate, far from his beloved metropolis, will cast his thoughts back to lines of suburban streets. dark wit hthe shade of great elms, dotted with peaceful villas in gardens where the turf is green and carpetlike. and flowers abound, and London itself seems continents away, though it be only round the corner in the guise of a dirty, grimy, crime laden street of the submerged tenth; or another still will think of the city, where meet Treadneedle street, Lom- bard street, Cheapside, Prince street, Queen Victoria street and King Will liam street, the busiest corner of the world, with the hank, the Royal ex- change and the Mansion house staring everlastingly down on the vast crowds, millionaires and paupers, lords and commoners, magnates and clerks, mo- tor omnibuses and grocers' vans. all held in check by the simple uplifting of a single hand, the hand of the most efficient policeman in Europe.
 All these scenes, and many more, represent London truly, and yet Lon don goes beyond them. A nation of 5000 900 people elects to call itself a town, but there are many towns. You walk for hours through great busi- ness thoroughfares, thinking at last that as you proceed the houses take on more and more suburban appear ance. and that you have at last reach ed the end of 1t all when, To. before you appears another equally great business thoroughfare, with vast shops, busy pavements, crashing mo- tor omnibuses. and strange, two-deck- metropolitan activity-streets perhaps unknown to the majority of London CTS. but which in other towns would be dignifed by the adjective 'princi. pal" And so you pass on until yo- reach the suburban villas again, only to stumble half an hour later into an other "principalp street with it's owr particular theaters, it's town hall, its local newspaper offices, and its owr | elf-contained mode of existence. East west, north, and south it is the same We who only live in Piccadilly and tho Strand or who imagine that we lvt in London merely because we take tn, ton to the Temple, know nothing o | the real London, because we never set it. The tourist only cracks the shell Q
 the egg. He never reaches the yolk
 have lived in London for 20 years and I am always discovering nev
 towns with new people, who in thei | turn are just as much Londoners a
 those who live nearer the heart Q l things. This is particularly true of tn
 East end, where the foreigner iron
 eastern Europe has chosen to thrive
 where English is seldom heard, an,
 even the policemen are required to ar
 rest miscreants in strange tongues, tn
 railway companies issue notices in
 gibherish called Yiddish, and even tn
 theater and newspapers are conductet
 In foreign languages There are severa
 millions of people on the south sid
 of the Thames, on the Surrey side O
 the river, vast congeries of towns
 with great business streets miles upol
 miles of fine residential districts am
 miles upon miles of slums. to whicl
 London proper never turns and f
 whose local affairs it pays no atten
 tion. Yet 1t is all part of London for now and then it comes across tn
 river in its leisure moments and trans
 acts It's affairs on the MiddIesex sid
 of the river. without betraying thos
 signs of strangeness that invariabl
 stamp the provincial or the foreigner
 The Surrey side sends to London grea
 army corps of men and women ever
 morning to work in the shops an
 warehouses. They come by tube an
 tram, load upon load. trooping to thei
 appointed tasks, turning never out c
 the beaten path, and going back g
 night to their particular local haunt:
 leaving London to the Londoner i
 his evening clothes or the mass C