C arl took the Oath at Westminster Abbey on a surprisingly balmy day in 
April and afterward went for a stride down the river, heading not too directly 
toward a reception that had been arranged in his honor at the Hopkins Theatre 
near Leicester Square. Even without a pedomotive, he walked as fast as many 
people jogged. Ever since his first visit to London as a malnourished theatre 
student, he had preferred walking to any other way of getting around the place. 
Walking, especially along the Embankment where fellow-pedestrians were 
relatively few, also gave him freedom to smoke big
old authentic cigars or the occasional briar pipe. Just because he was a 
Victorian didn't mean he had to give up his peculiarities; quite the opposite, 
in fact. Cruising along past old shrapnel-pocked Cleopatra's Needle in a 
comet-like corona of his own roiling, viscous smoke, he thought that he might 
get to like this.