Francis Hopkinson Smith

“ LONDON BRIDGE, WHERE NOAH CLAYPOLE DOGGED NANCY SIKES'S STEPS THE NIGHT SHE WAS MURDERED
There are summer days in England when the air is a benediction, the sunshine a balm, and the delicate greys melting into mists of pearl a joy of the painter; when fleets of wind-filled clouds drift over the blue, their shadows mottling the lush meadows, their topsails mirrored in long stretches of burnished silver—days which are a delight to the eye and a feast to the soul. ”

“ It was on one of these June afternoons, and at an hour when the traffic was thickest, that I halted my cab at one end of London Bridge, touched my hat to the officer in charge, and began my story, opening up with some light, desultory talk on a variety of subjects, punctured at the critical moment by the tender of one of my choicest one with a red-and-gold band which he thrust between the front buttons of his coat,—cigars being fragile and pockets ungetatable in a tight-fitting uniform. I then asked permission to anchor my cab and begin work. ”

“ And some of this is true of London, not only in its squares, parks, and gardens, gay with trees and flowering shrubs, but along the Great Embankment, where the stone-and-iron monsters wade knee-deep in the Thames, their broad backs freighted with countless multitudes. ”