“This,” said my sister, impressively, “is England.”

We had been here only half an hour, but I had already got my point of view.

“Let’s go out and look up a hotel where they take Americans,” I said.  “I feel the need of ice-water.”

Our drinking-water at “The Insular” was on the end of the wash-stand nearest the fire.

So, feeling a little timid and nervous, but not in the least homesick, we went downstairs.  One of our gorgeous retinue called a cab and we entered it.

“Where shall we go?” asked my sister.

“I feel like saying to the first hotel we see,” I said.

Just then we raised our eyes and they rested simultaneously upon a sign, “The Empire Hotel for Cats and Dogs.”  This simple solution of our difficulty put us in such high good humor that we said we wouldn’t look up a hotel just yet—­we would take a drive.

Under these circumstances we took our first drive down Piccadilly, and Europe to me dates from that moment.  The ship, the landing, the custom-house, the train, the hotel—­all these were mere preliminaries to the Europe, which began then.  People told me in America how my heart would swell at this, and how I would thrill at that, but it was not so.  My first real thrill came to me in Piccadilly.  It went all over me in little shivers and came out at the ends of my fingers, and then began once more at the base of my brain and did it all over again.

But what is the use of describing one’s first view of London streets and traffic to the initiated?  Can they, who became used to it as children, appreciate it?  Can they look back and recall how it struck them?  No.  When I try to tell Americans over here they look at me curiously and say, “Dear me, how odd!” The way they say it leaves me to draw any one of three conclusions:  either they are not impressionable, and are therefore honest in denying the feeling; or they think it vulgar to admit it; or I am the only grown person in America who never has been to Europe before.

But I am indifferent to their opinion.  People are right in saying this great tremendous rush of feeling can come but once.  It is like being in love for the first time.  You like it and yet you don’t like it.  You wish it would go away, yet you fear that it will go all too soon.  It gets into your head and makes you dizzy, and you want to shut your eyes, but you are afraid if you do that you will miss something.  You cannot eat and you cannot sleep, and you feel that you have two consciousnesses:  one which belongs to the life you have lived hitherto, and which still is going on, somewhere in the world, unmindful of you, and you unmindful of it; and the other is this new bliss which is beating in your veins and sounding in your ears and shining before your eyes, which no one knows and no one dreams of, but which keeps a smile on your lips—­a smile which has in it nothing of humor, nothing from the great without, but which-comes from the secret recesses of your own inner consciousness, where the heart of the matter lies.