that one was asked by an American who is wasting himself on the London
Press.

I don't want to speak in anger. But I say it frankly, the atmosphere
of these young men is not healthy, and I felt that I didn't want
to see them any more.

Had there been a reporter of the kind we have at home in Montreal
or Toledo or Springfield, Illinois, I would have welcomed him at
my hotel. He could have taken me out in a Ford car and shown me a
factory and told me how many cubic feet of water go down the Thames
in an hour. I should have been glad of his society, and he and I
would have together made up the kind of copy that people of his
class and mine read. But I felt that if any young man came along
to ask about the structure of the modern drama, he had better go
on to the British Museum.

Meantime as the reporters entirely failed to elicit the large fund
of information which I acquired, I reserve my impressions of London
for a chapter by themselves.



III. - Impressions of London

BEFORE setting down my impressions of the great English metropolis;
a phrase which I have thought out as a designation for London; I
think it proper to offer an initial apology. I find that I receive
impressions with great difficulty and have nothing of that easy
facility in picking them up which is shown by British writers on