Mention some very rare curiosity of a peculiar nature—­a something which you have read about somewhere but never seen—­they show you a dozen!  They show you all the possible varieties of that thing!  They show you curiously wrought jeweled necklaces of beaten gold, worn by the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Etruscans, Greeks, Britons—­every people of the forgotten ages, indeed.  They show you the ornaments of all the tribes and peoples that live or ever did live.  Then they show you a cast taken from Cromwell’s face in death; then the venerable vase that once contained the ashes of Xerxes.

I am wonderfully thankful for the British Museum.  Nobody comes bothering around me—­nobody elbows me—­all the room and all the light I want, under this huge dome—­no disturbing noises—­and people standing ready to bring me a copy of pretty much any book that ever was printed under the sun—­and if I choose to go wandering about the long corridors and galleries of the great building the secrets of all the earth and all the ages axe laid open to me.  I am not capable of expressing my gratitude for the British Museum—­it seems as if I do not know any but little words and weak ones.

Westminster Abbey by night

It was past eleven o’clock and I was just going to bed.  But this friend of mine was as reliable as he was eccentric, and so there was not a doubt in my mind that his “expedition” had merit in it.  I put on my coat and boots again, and we drove away.

    “Where is it?  Where are we going?”

    “Don’t worry.  You’ll see.”

He was not inclined to talk.  So I thought this must be a weighty matter.  My curiosity grew with the minutes, but I kept it manfully under the surface.  I watched the lamps, the signs, the numbers as we thundered down the long street.  I am always lost in London, day or night.  It was very chilly, almost bleak.  People leaned against the gusty blasts as if it were the dead of winter.  The crowds grew thinner and thinner, and the noises waxed faint and seemed far away.  The sky was overcast and threatening.  We drove on, and still on, till I wondered if we were ever going to stop.  At last we passed by a spacious bridge and a vast building, and presently entered a gateway, passed through a sort of tunnel, and stopped in a court surrounded by the black outlines of a great edifice.  Then we alighted, walked a dozen steps or so, and waited.  In a little while footsteps were heard, a man emerged from the darkness, and we dropped into his wake without saying anything.  He led us under an archway of masonry, and from that into a roomy tunnel, through a tall iron gate, which he locked behind us.  We followed him down this tunnel, guided more by his footsteps on the stone flagging than by anything we could very distinctly see.  At the end of it we came to another iron gate, and our conductor stopped there and lit a bull’s-eye