Children of as tender years as those who manage the postal-stations, go
round with tea and coffee between the acts, as with us the
myriad-buttoned ice-water boy passes; but whereas this boy returns
always with a tray of empty glasses, I never saw a human being drink
either the tea or coffee offered by those female infants in any London
theatre.

Let it be not supposed, however, that I went much to London theatres. I
went perhaps half a dozen times in as many weeks. Once settled in my
chair, I might well have fancied myself at home in a New York theatre,
except that the playing seemed rather better, and the English intonation
not quite so scrupulously English as that which our actors have produced
after a conscientious study of the original. I heard that the English
actors had studied the American accent for a play imported from us; but
I did not see this play, and I am now very sorry. The American accent,
at least, must have been worth hearing, if one might judge from the
reproductions of our parlance which I heard in private life by people
who had sojourned, or merely travelled, among us. These were so
unfailingly delightful, that one could not have wished them more like.

The arriving and departing of theatre-goers by night adds sensibly to
the brilliancy of the complexion of London. The flare of electricity in
the region of the theatres made a midnight summer in the empty heart of
September, and recalled the gayety of the season for the moment to the
desolate metropolis. But this splendor was always so massed and so vivid
that even in the height of the season it was one of the things that
distinguished itself among the various immense impressions. The
impressions were all, if I may so try to characterize them, transitory;
they were effects of adventitious circumstances; they were not
structural in their origin. The most memorable aspect of the Strand or