The Carlisle independent., 1918-02-28

years ago an Englishman in America, happening to enter into conversation with a negro schoolteacher, learned that one of the keenest desires of her life was to see London, and that she especially wanted to visit every place that was connected with the characters in Dickens.
 Places of Special Interest.
 Many Americans, again, spend indus trious days in hunting up buildings that have some historic connection with the foundation and early development of their own communities. There is a long list of churches where eminent Americans of the colonial period were baptised: William Penn, at All Hal- lows, Barking; Roger Williams at St. Sepulchere's; Calvert, the founder of Maryland, at St. Giles-in-the-Fields; General Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia, at Martin n's-in-the-Fields and John Harvard at St. Saviour's Cathe- dral, Southwark, where the incident is now commemorated by a memorial window. St. Ethelburga's is of inter- est as the church where Henry Hud- son and his crew are reported to have made their last communion the night before they sailed. The house in New man street, occupied by Benjamin West, may be quoted as an example of many buildings whose associations appeal to American visitors almost ex- clusiyely.
 It would be quite a mistake, how ever, to suppose that to the American London serves no other purpose than to make more vivid what he has learn ed at school. However diligent he may be in following up it's historical and literary associations, he finds time to sample it's lighter side-its theaters and other entertainments, and it's so- cial festivities, in so far as he has access to them. Even that ornament of the American-learned world, Dr. An drew D. White, the late president of Cornell university, records in his au- photography how, after working in the British museum, he found refreshment in an evening at Maskelyne and Cooke's "great temple of jugglery."
 Yet, after all, as Oliver Wendell Holmes puts it, "the great sight is Lon- don." In the old days, before the era of motor traffic, nothing could beat the top of a horse-drawn bus as a means of regaling oneself with the ever-chang- ing panorama of the streets, and, al- though the petrol engine has banished the more leisurely progress of that time, an outside seat on a bus remains uEriTaled as a point from which to observe the everyday life of the city. The streets themselves impress an American with their tidiness. Their paving is kept in good repair, and they are free from the litter that disfigures Important thoroughfares in New York.
 Some of the Exceptions.
 AS rule, the American in London means to have a good time, and gets 1t. There are, of course, exceptions people who lack the gifts of sympathy and imagination, and who accordingly miss all that is of unique interest in the scenes they visit. A man of this type was once, it is said, standing on the Terrace of the House of Con- mons and Dragging about the glories of some river in his own state. It was much finer river than the Thames cleaner, wider and so on. John Burns happened to be close by and could not stand it. Do you know, sir" he broke in, what that brown river is? It's liquid history" But that narrow-mind- ed provlncialism is not the prevailing mental attitude of cultivated Ameri- cans. On the contrary, the impact of London upon them would more faith fully be expressed by the passage in which James Russell Lowell, under a different figure, emphasized that sense of historic continuity which appealed so strongly to John Burns.
 "One thing about London" he said, 'tmpresses me beyond any other sound have ever heard and that is the low unceasing roar one hears always in the air; it is Tot a mere accident, like a tempest or a cataract, but it is impress sive, because it always indicates hu- man will, and impulse, and conscious movement; and I confess that when I hear it I almost feel as if were lis- tening to the roaring loom of time."