'London particular,' Mr. Guppy's phrase for a fog. When you are

once ensconced in your garden seat by the driver, you go lumbering
through a world of bobbing shadows, where all is weird, vague, grey,

dense; and where great objects loom up suddenly in the mist and then
disappear; where the sky, heavy and leaden, seems to descend bodily

upon your head, and the air is full of a kind of luminous yellow
smoke.

A Lipton's Tea 'bus is the only one we can see plainly in this sort
of weather, and so we always take it. I do not wish, however, to be

followed literally in these modest suggestions for omnibus rides,
because I am well aware that they are not sufficientlyspecific for

the ordinary tourist who wishes to see London systematically and
without any loss of time. If you care to go to any particular

place, or reach that place by any particular time, you must not, of
course, look at the most conspicuous signs on the tops and ends of

the chariots as we do; you must stand quietly at one of the regular
points of departure and try to decipher, in a narrow horizontal

space along the side, certain little words that show the route and
destination of the vehicle. They say that it can be done, and I do

not feel like denying it on my own responsibility. Old Londoners
assert that they are not blinded or confused by Pears' Soap in

letters two feet high, scarlet on a gold ground, but can see below
in fine print, and with the naked eye, such legends as Tottenham

Court Road, Westbourne Grove, St. Pancras, Paddington, or Victoria.
It is certainly reasonable that the omnibuses should be decorated to

suit the inhabitants of the place rather than foreigners, and it is
perhaps better to carry a few hundred stupid souls to the wrong

station daily than to allow them to cleanse their hands with the
wrong soap, or quench their thirst with the wrong (which is to say

the unadvertised) beverage.
The conductors do all in their power to mitigate the lot of unhappy

strangers, and it is only now and again that you hear an absent-
minded or logical one call out, 'Castoria! all the w'y for a penny.'

We claim for our method of travelling, not that it is authoritative,
but that it is simple--suitable to persons whose desires are

flexible and whose plans are not fixed. It has its disadvantages,
which may indeed be said of almost anything. For instance, we had

gone for two successive mornings on a Cadbury's Cocoa 'bus to
Francesca's dressmaker in Kensington. On the third morning,

deceived by the ambitious and unscrupulous Cadbury, we mounted it
and journeyed along comfortably three miles to the east of

Kensington before we discovered our mistake. It was a pleasant and
attractive neighbourhood where we found ourselves, but unfortunately

Francesca's dressmaker did not reside there.
If you have determined to take a certain train from a certain

station, and do not care for any other, no matter if it should turn
out to be just as interesting, then never take a Lipton's Tea 'bus,

for it is the most unreliable of all. If it did not sound so
learned, and if I did not feel that it must have been said before,

it is so apt, I should quote Horace, and say, 'Omnibus hoc vitium
est.' There is no 'bus unseized by the Napoleonic Lipton. Do not

ascend one of them supposing for a moment that by paying fourpence
and going to the very end of the route you will come to a neat tea

station, where you will be served with the cheering cup. Never; nor
with a draught of Cadbury's cocoa or Nestle's milk, although you

have jostled along for nine weary miles in company with their
blatant recommendations to drink nothing else, and though you may

have passed other 'buses with the same highly-coloured names glaring
at you until they are burned into the grey matter of your brain, to

remain there as long as the copy-book maxims you penned when you
were a child.

These pictorial methods doubtless prove a source of great financial
gain; of course it must be so, or they would never be prosecuted;

but although they may allure millions of customers, they will lose
two in our modest persons. When Salemina and I go into a cafe for

tea we ask the young woman if they serve Lipton's, and if they say
yes, we take coffee. This is self-punishment indeed (in London!),

yet we feel that it may have a moral effect; perhaps not
commensurate with the physical effect of the coffee upon us, but

these delicate matters can never be adjusted with absolute
exactitude.

Sometimes when we are to travel on a Pears' Soap 'bus we buy
beforehand a bit of pure white Castile, cut from a shrinking,

reserved, exclusive bar with no name upon it, and present it to some
poor woman when we arrive at our journey's end. We do not suppose

that so insignificant a protest does much good, but at least it
preserves one's individuality and self-respect.

Chapter IX. A Table of Kindred and Affinity.
On one of our excursions Hilda Mellifica accompanied us, and we

alighted to see the place where the Smithfield martyrs were
executed, and to visit some of the very old churches in that

vicinity. We found hanging in the vestibule of one of them
something quite familiar to Hilda, but very strange to our American

eyes: 'A Table of Kindred and Affinity, wherein whosoever are
related are forbidden in Scripture and our Laws to Marry Together.'

Salemina was very quiet that afternoon, and we accused her
afterwards of being depressed because she had discovered that, added

to the battalions of men in England who had not thus far urged her
to marry them, there were thirty persons whom she could not legally

espouse even if they did ask her!
I cannot explain it, but it really seemed in some way that our

chances of a 'sweet, safe corner of the household fire' had
materially decreased when we had read the table.

"It only goes to prove what Salemina remarked yesterday," I said:
"that we can go on doing a thing quite properly until we have seen

the rule for it printed in black and white. The moment we read the
formula we fail to see how we could ever have followed it; we are

confused by its complexities, and we do not feel the slightest
confidence in our ability to do consciously the thing we have done

all our lives unconsciously."
"Like the centipede," quoted Salemina:-

"'The centipede was happy quite
Until the toad, for fun,

Said, "Pray, which leg goes after which?"
Which wrought his mind to such a pitch,

He lay distracted in a ditch
Considering how to run!'"

"The Table of Kindred and Affinity is all too familiar to me,"
sighed Hilda, "because we had a governess who made us learn it as a

punishment. I suppose I could recite it now, although I haven't
looked at it for ten years. We used to chant it in the nursery

schoolroom on wet afternoons. I well remember that the vicar called
one day to see us, and the governess, hearing our voices uplifted in

a pious measure, drew him under the window to listen. This is what
he heard--you will see how admirably it goes! And do not imagine it

is wicked: it is merely the Law, not the Gospel, and we framed our
own musical settings, so that we had no associations with the Prayer

Book."
Here Hilda chanted softly, there being no one in the old

churchyard:-
"A woman may not marry with her Grandfather . Grandmother's Husband,

Husband's Grandfather .. Father's Brother . Mother's Brother .
Father's Sister's Husband .. Mother's Sister's Husband . Husband's

Father's Brother . Husband's Mother's Brother .. Father . Step-
Father . Husband's Father .. Son . Husband's Son . Daughter's

Husband .. Brother . Husband's Brother . Sister's Husband .. Son's
Son . Daughter's Son . Son's Daughter's Husband .. Daughter's

Daughter's Husband . Husband's Son's Son . Husband's Daughter's Son
.. Brother's Son . Sister's Son . Brother's Daughter's Husband ..

Sister's Daughter's Husband . Husband's Brother's Son . Husband's
Sister's Son."