CHAPTER XXXIII

"THIS IS LONDON, THIS IS LIFE"


Thus it was that, all unexpectedly, Henry found himself set down one
autumn morning at the homeless hour of a quarter-to-seven, in Euston
station. He was going to stay in some street off the Strand, and
chartered a hansom to take him there. Few great cities are impressive in
the neighbourhood of their railway termini. You enter them, so to speak,
by the back door; and London waves no banners of bright welcome to the
stranger who first enters it by the Euston Road.

But there was an interesting church presently, and on a dust-cart close
by Henry read "Vestry of St. Pancras."

"Can that be the St. Pancras' Church," he said to himself, "where Mary
Wollstonecraft lies buried, and Browning was married?"

Then as they drove along through Bloomsbury, the name "Great Coram
Street" caught his eye, and he exclaimed with delight: "Why, that's
where Thackeray lived for a time!"

Great Coram Street is little accustomed to create such excitement in the
breast of the passer-by. But to the stranger London is necessarily first
a museum, till he begins to love it as a home, and, in addition to dead
men's associations, begins to people it with memories of his own. When