“I didn’t go over into Southwark; I couldn’t stand it.  The next day I went back to the Stock Exchange to make my sketch.  I’ve done sketches in London before—­every nook and cranny of it—­but this time I felt a little nervous when I got there with my umbrella and my little tools.  But I managed it.  I said to the bobby, I said—­”

And then Mr. Smith, getting up from his chair and relapsing into the frown that always means he is going to tell a story, showed how he managed it.  It is impossible to reproduce Mr. Smith’s inimitable manner.

“‘Are you, now?’ said I.

“’Well, ‘ow can I tell?’ said he.

“‘But if you’re the excellent English bobby that I believe you to be,’ said I, ’you’ll see at once that I’m an honest American artist just here to do a little sketching.’

“‘I tell you,’ said he.  W’y don’t you just pop hup and see ’Is Lordship the Mayor?’

“And so I did pop up and I told the Lord Mayor my troubles, and he waved me a hearty wave of his hand and said he’d do anything to oblige an American, and I came down again, and here was the bobby still very upright but watching my approach from the tail of his eye.  And I pretended I had never seen him, but as I went past I slipped him a cigar, and when I passed back again he twinkled his eye.  Stuck between the buttons of his coat, there being no other place, was my fat cigar.

“I made my sketch of the Royal Exchange.  I want Americans to see what can happen if His Imperial Lowness over on the Continent sees fit to send his Zeppelins to England.  Not being big enough nor strong enough to injure England vitally, he can take this method of injury, he can injure women and children and maim horses, destroy business and works of art and blow up the congested districts.

“We have seen what the Savior of the World’s Culture could do in France and Belgium; it is small wonder that all England has in the back of her head surmises as to what he might accomplish if some of his air craft crossed the Channel.  By which I do not mean to say that the English are apprehensive.  They are not nervous.  I have spent more than a month with them, among my own friends, learning the general temper of the country.

“There are no demonstrations, there is no boasting, no display.  London is much the same as it always was.  At night London is darkened, in accordance with the order of Oct. 9, but that is about all the difference.  It is so dark that you can hardly get up Piccadilly, but London takes her amusements about as usual.  The theatres are not overcrowded, but neither are they empty.  For luncheons and for dinners Prince’s is full, the Carlton is full.  The searchlights are playing over the city looking for those Zeppelins.  That is a new wrinkle to me; the idea of blinding the men up there at the wheel with a powerful light is a good one.