This particular part of London is connected with the existence of
that strange and mysterious thing called "the City." I am still
unable to decide whether the city is a person, or a place, or a
thing. But as a form of being I give it credit for being the most
emotional, the most volatile, the most peculiar creature in the
world. You read in the morning paper that the City is "deeply
depressed." At noon it is reported that the City is "buoyant" and by
four o'clock that the City is "wildly excited."

I have tried in vain to find the causes of these peculiar changes
of feeling. The ostensible reasons, as given in the newspaper, are
so trivial as to be hardly worthy of belief. For example, here is
the kind of news that comes out from the City. "The news that a
modus vivendi has been signed between the Sultan of Kowfat and the
Shriek-ul-Islam has caused a sudden buoyancy in the City. Steel
rails which had been depressed all morning reacted immediately
while American mules rose up sharply to par." . . . "Monsieur Poincar,
speaking at Bordeaux, said that henceforth France must seek to
retain by all possible means the ping-pong championship of the
world: values in the City collapsed at once." . . . "Despatches from
Bombay say that the Shah of Persia yesterday handed a golden slipper
to the Grand Vizier Feebli Pasha as a sign that he might go and
chase himself: the news was at once followed by a drop in oil, and
a rapid attempt to liquidate everything that is fluid . . ."

But these mysteries of the City I do not pretend to explain. I have
passed through the place dozens of times and never noticed anything
particular in the way of depression or buoyancy, or falling oil,
or rising rails. But no doubt it is there.