When in London I usually get a room near the British Museum for ten shillings a week; and when I want to go anywhere I walk up to the Gower Street Station, past the house where the mother of Charles Dickens had her Young Ladies’ Establishment, and buying a ticket at the “Booking-Office” am duly set down near the desired objective point.  You can go anywhere by the “Metropolitan,” or if you prefer to take Mr. Gladstone’s advice, you climb to the top of an Oxford Street bus, and if you sit next the driver you have a directory, guide and familiar friend all at your service.

Charlotte Street is a narrow little passage running just two squares, parallel with Portland Place.  The houses are built in blocks of five (or more), of the plainest of plain bricks.  The location is not far from the Gower Street Station of the Metropolitan Railway, and only a few minutes’ walk from the British Museum.  Number Thirty-eight is the last but one on the east side of the street.  When I first saw it, there was a sign in the window, “Apartments,” and back of this fresh cambric curtains.  Then the window had been cleaned, too, for a single day of neglect in London tells its tale, as does the record of crime on a rogue’s face.  I paused and looked the place over with interest.  I noted that the brass plate with the “No. 38” on it had been polished until it had been nearly polished out of sight, like a machine-made sonnet too much gone over.  The steps had been freshly sanded, and a little lemon-tree nodding in one of the windows made the rusty old house look quite inviting.  A stout little woman with a big market-basket, bumped into me and apologized, for I had stepped backwards to get a better look at the upstairs windows.  The stout little woman set down her basket on the steps, took a bunch of keys from a pocket under her big, white, starched apron, selected one, turned to me, smiled, and asked, “Mebbe, Sir, you wasn’t looking for apartments, I dunno?” Then she explained that the house was hers, and that if I would step in she would show me the rooms.  There were two of ’em she could spare.  The first floor front was already let, and so was the front parlor—­to a young barrister.  Her husband was a ticket-taker at Euston Station, and didn’t get much since last cutdown.  Would I care to pay as much as ten shillings, and would I want breakfast?  It would only be ninepence, and I could have either a chop or ham and eggs.  She looked after her boarders herself, just as if they were her own folks, and only took respectable single gentlemen who came well recommended.  She knew I would like the room, and if ten shillings was too much I could have the back room for seven and six.

I thought the back room would answer; but explained that I was an American and was going to remain in London only a short time.  Of course the lady knew I was an American:  she knew it from my hat and from my foreign accent and—­from the red book I had in my hand.  And did I know the McIntyres that lived in Michigan?